


You Should Say Hi

by RedWild_Rush



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternative Coffeeshop AU, Detective!Bellamy, F/M, Fluff, They'll be the death of me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-18
Updated: 2015-02-06
Packaged: 2018-02-26 04:49:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 43,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2638649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedWild_Rush/pseuds/RedWild_Rush
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dates were hard to come by, and loneliness sucked.<br/>Or- That time that blonde girl bought him a coffee and all bets were off.</p><p>(I'm really bad at descriptions)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first work, and constructive feedback is always welcome! These two will be the death of me

She was very particular about her coffee.

She suspects she gets that from her mother. The particularity, at least, if not the inherent stubbornness that could claim part responsibility for her not actually speaking to her mother.

Not to mention being a painting prodigy from one of the most prominent art schools in the country paved the way for a caffeine addict to form. And now, commissioned by not one, not two, but three prominent families in the country to do several original pieces, Clarke Griffin's coffee addiction would come out in full force. She could only thank God that her town had decided against building a Starbucks in the square, not only because ew, but also due to the fact that she came up with some of her best sketches while people watching. The Coffee Lodge in the town square was only a ten minute walk from her apartment downtown, far enough that the walk helped clear her head and close enough that she wasn't deterred from actually walking.

It's not often that a person is so completely adept in two different subjects. It was her great- grandma who had been an artist (and clearly passed down that gene). But every other woman in her admittedly matriarchal family had gone straight to medicine. Clarke could have gone to John Hopkins right out of high school; she had taken so many AP classes at Ark Preparatory that she would have been close to being a junior in credits after her first year. But after Wells, and after her dad, hospitals made her cringe. The smell of sterilization and the bright fluorescent lights that lined the hallways of Ark Memorial gave her nightmares. There was no way she could have gone through medical school, residency, and attending status without tearing her hair out or breaking down. (She wasn't afraid exactly of hospitals, she would just rather never step foot in one)

She also blamed this fact for never seeing her mother. 

(The list of reasons was getting longer)

So instead, against the wishes of everyone in her living family (which only included her mother and the Jaha's as of her senior year at Ark Prep), Clarke had gone to art school in Rhode Island, about as far from her mother as she could get without landing in the Atlantic Ocean or going international. It had taken time to get used to living at a different income level than she had growing up. But she didn't get access to her trust fund her dad had left her until she turned 21 (now two years ago), so she had to make do (she had gotten very good at waitressing in her four years in Rhode Island, to say the least). But now, she had access to the trust fund (and she was also spending very wisely), and was getting commission from the pieces she was hired for. 

She was still living in Arken on a trial basis. West Coast Best Coast and all that. But she wasn't above giving somewhere else a chance.

Without Wells, without Finn, and (voluntarily) without her mother, Arken still had a slight draw for Clarke, but it was getting old very quickly being so alone all the time. She spent so much time at the Lodge; she knew most of the regulars. Today, however, she decided to come in at a different time. Usually she was getting coffee at night-- trying to stay up and formulate some kind of inspiration for her work, but this particular, unimportant Tuesday, she was trying something different. Morning coffee, instead of staying up until 4 A.M.-- what a concept.

That was why the coffee patrons she saw today were different than the regulars. But this unimportant Tuesday morning marked something that would end up quite important in the long run. It was the first time she saw him.

She was in the Lodge, staring off into the space above the door. It was usually very difficult to shake off the stupor of her "zone", but this time, for some unfathomable reason, the man at the door completely grabbed her attention.

He wasn't traditionally handsome. His face was kind of long, and his cheekbones were sharp. But something about the deep chocolate brown eyes framed by unfairly long eyelashes (like really, she thought, what male has eyelashes that long?) caught her eye. Dark brown hair that curled slightly at the end reached down to skim his tanned forehead. He seemed a bit older than her 23 years, only emphasized by the laugh lines around his eyes and full mouth. 

Brown eyes slamming into hers jolted her out of her (obvious) perusal.

His lips tilted into a smirk as her cheek burned. Her eyes flew to the blank paper in her lap. 

Because really, it had been a long time since attraction of this caliber had hit so close to home. It had been years since Finn, and let's face it, the other dates since then barely counted towards her love life (or lack thereof). Clarke simply didn't know how to act when guys showed interest, mostly because she usually wasn't interested back.

But her hands itched to paint him.

When she finally raised her eyes again, he was at the front of the line.

"Drip coffee. Black. And throw in a bagel too, please." His voice was low, gravelly, and the sound sent tingles up her spine.

While he paid for his breakfast, Clarke grabbed a pencil from her bag. Her hands flew across the paper, sketching the outline of his face while trying to hide her glances at him.

The next time she looked up, he was right there, at the cream and sugar station that was, of course, right next to her table in the corner. She squeaked as she jolted in surprise, and his lips turned into a small grin at her surprise.

Holy God, she thought, he really is beautiful.

Now that he was closer, she could see the spatter of freckles that were scattered across his nose and cheeks. They added to his unconventional beauty like the constellations across the night sky. As she tore her gaze away from his freckles, her skin burned, knowing somehow that he was looking back at her.

Clarke was sure he couldn't see the sketch in her lap, but she still blushed. When she finally gathered the courage to look up again, he was walking away. She followed his gait as he strolled to the door, eyes glued to the way his dark jeans shaped around his lower half. Yum. With his black leather jacket, magnificent dark jeans, and black boots, he looked like a total badass, someone who was very sure of himself and his worth.

As he opened the door, he turned back to face her. Their eyes met and electric shock few up her spine. From her seat, Clarke could see his eyes smiling even if his mouth was only slightly curved up. He nodded to her, winking with a grin, tilting his coffee towards her in a salute before finally exiting the Lodge.

Once he was gone, she let out a huge breath and finally cooled down. No one had affected her so drastically, ever. Not even Finn. The hairs on the back of her neck were still on end, and she could feel the heat still in her cheeks. She looked at the no- longer- blank paper on her lap. It was just an outline, nothing filled in, but she desperately wanted to finish it, if only so she could gaze at the beauty of his face whenever she wanted. She wasn't considered a prodigy for nothing. Yes, she could probably finish the sketch into a general likeness, but she wouldn't. She didn't want it to look 'kind of' like him, and she was bound to make mistakes, as would anyone who had only seen their model for a few minutes. And she wanted this particular sketch to be perfect.

No, she mused, I'll only draw him if I see him again.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've got the first little bit written, so they'll be uploaded pretty quickly! Enjoy!

Fuck, Bellamy thought as he reached his car. Unfortunately, his detective salary didn't really support a new car, so he was stuck trying to look cool in his hand- me- down '93 Honda Accord. But his car wasn't what had him so flustered.

That blond. That blue- eyed, fair- skinned, little, tiny, blond.

 _Holy shit_. The words to describe her wouldn't even come to his brain. The second he had walked into the Lodge, and saw her salivating over him like a dog with a bone (he wasn’t being conceited with that, he literally felt like a piece of meat, but he was not complaining), he was gone. And that usually didn't happen to him.

 _I winked at her, oh my God, I actually winked at her_. He nearly groaned in frustration. The first girl to catch his eye since Roma, and he winked at her like a total creep. _On one hand_ , he mused, t _he chances of me seeing her again are slim to none_. The thought sent a slight pang to his chest and he growled as he rubbed at the spot in the middle of his sternum. _God Bellamy, don't be weird._

As he drove to the station, he drank the cooling coffee and contemplated his lack of love life. Yeah, he knew he was attractive (once again, not being conceited, he just wasn’t going to deny the truth). And yes, he knew some girls were super attracted to the whole 'detective' gig. But besides his year- long relationship with Roma that ended nine months ago, his love life had been dismal. Those two blind dates with friends of Octavia's had been disasters, ending in him begging Miller to text with an "emergency" at the station to get out of them early.

And he was tired of saying no to the double dates Octavia invited him to. The pity in Lincoln's eyes when he declined every time, citing a "work obligation". They knew it wasn't work. They knew he would probably just go home, pop open a beer, and settle down for the night watching football.

He was lonely.

All of the people he cared about had their significant others, and he was happy for them. Miller had Ashley. Octavia had Lincoln. Even those two geeks at the coroner’s office had girlfriends. Bellamy would never admit it out loud, of course, that he craved human affection further than those one- night stands he grew out of in his academy years. He wanted to be able to come home to someone that would soothe away his turbulent thoughts about homicides and crime that raced in his head after each work day.

He needed someone.

He had Octavia. But she was his sister, and although her hugs helped and she somehow always knew when he needed a 'sibling night' at his place with pizza and popcorn and romantic comedies (he pretended to hate them, but Octavia knew he would be disappointed if she didn't bring over 27 Dresses), she had to go home to Lincoln at the end of the night. And he had Miller. Nathan had been his best friend since they'd partnered up at the Academy. He probably knew more about Bellamy than anyone else in the world. But Miller met Ashley just about 3 years ago, and proposed less than a year later. Both his sister and best friend had found their other half, their person.

But Bellamy hadn't found his.

And usually, he was able to ignore that niggling feeling in the back of his head, reminding him about passing time and that his badge could only provide so much comfort. But for some reason, that blonde brought everything he had been trying to suppress to the forefront. To a point, Bellamy resented her for that. He needed to be focused on his work, and on the people that counted on him. Not on his loneliness or the fact that he hadn't enjoyed a woman's touch for eight months (he had tried to replace the physicality he had with Roma right after their breakup, but it had been an empty, meaningless, unfulfilling affair that he hadn't cared to repeat. His hand worked just fine when the build up became too distracting, thank you very much).

As he pulled into the station, he shook his head and tossed the now- empty coffee cup. Distractions didn't work well when you were dealing with criminals that used violence as their language. He needed to be able to ignore his personal issues, be able to be sure of every judgment call, with not only his life, but Miller's as well.

Bellamy nodded to the desk attendant, a tiny little guy who had failed all the academy physical tests, but had aced every written exam the academy threw his way. Bellamy thought his potential was wasted as a mere desk attendant, but no one could get their badge unless they passed all the tests. The guy was determined though, and being the man at the front desk was the next best thing until he passed the physical.

"Yo, Blake." As he pushed open the door to the office, Miller came strolling in the front door. "Hey man, you never texted me back on Saturday night." Nathan threw his arm around Bellamy's shoulder. "Ashley wanted to introduce you to her friend at the bar. Let me tell you, man, you definitely missed out."

Bellamy just shrugged, "I wasn't feeling it. I needed to just relax at home." Unfortunately, the excuses were getting lamer and lamer with every invitation.

But Miller knew him too well. "Of course you weren't feeling it. You need to get out more, man. Maybe you'll start feeling it once you get your hands on a girl of your own." And of course, Miller knew exactly what his deal was. Knew the dry spell that seemed to be the longest in history.

"Shove off, Miller. I'll get out when I'm ready." But Bellamy chuckled, purposefully smiling to let Miller relax a little.

The changes in Nathan Miller still astounded him. When Bellamy had first met him, he had been quiet, reserved, barely speaking at all, but loyal almost to a fault. It was the way he was raised, he had claimed later. His dad had been a general in the military, demanding respect and purpose for all of his children. Growing up, Miller just found that it was easier to watch rather than speak, keeping that practice all the way up to his time at the Academy, as well as on his way through the ranks at the precinct.

And then came the criminal John Murphy. The shooting at his hideout in the slums of Arken had injured three cops, including Miller, and killed one. Miller had been in the hospital for months, recovering. Bellamy had refused another partner until Miller was fully recovered, keeping mostly to deskwork and consultation. For some reason, the higher- ups at the precinct hadn't penalized him for refusing cases, handing them over to Atom and Jason. Five months later, Bellamy and Miller had walked into the precinct together, receiving a standing ovation from the other officers and detectives, welcoming Miller back into the fold. Murphy had since disappeared, still on the state's Most Wanted listing, but hadn't been seen since.

"Well, Blake, if you aren't doing anything this weekend, Ash and I are heading out to-"

"Miller, Blake, my office, now." Captain Kane barked from his office door.

Kane was a hardass. Not many people in the district liked him. But no one could deny that he got the job done, quickly and effectively.

And Bellamy was grateful for the interruption. He hated having to think of new excuses.

He just nodded to the captain. "Come on Nate, let's get this done."


	3. Chapter 3

It was getting colder. There was a difference between winter on the East coast and winter in the West. Clarke didn’t know exactly what it was. Maybe it was just being back in Arken, maybe it was proximity to the ocean, or the change from the Atlantic to the Pacific. But regardless of geographic location, Clarke loved this time of year. The leaves were changing, there was that extra crispy bite to the early morning air, and peppermint mochas were becoming her go-to drink at the Lodge. 

When Clarke was younger, her father would take both her and Wells to the ice skating rink this time of year. Jake Griffin had been an exceptional father, but not without faults. Like his wife, Jake had the tendency to overwork himself. But unlike Clarke’s mother, Jake was able to usually catch himself, and would attempt to make it up to their only child by spending more time with her. And how Clarke loved him. She loved her mother, but there was that bond between father and daughter that even Abby Griffin couldn’t break or compete with. Jake was the parent who went to all of Clarke’s choir performances, and science fairs, and art exhibits (Clarke had been an exceptionally bright student). Back then, Clarke didn’t blame her mother for her absence. Jake had explained early on how important her mother’s work was to the community and the research hospital, and when Abby had been promoted to Chief of Surgery, the entire family was ecstatic. Clarke wanted to be just like her mom, a doctor, so she could save people too. 

That obviously wasn’t the case any longer. 

Now, because of Wells and her dad, Clarke was an artist. Maybe she wasn’t saving peoples life with medicine, but she prided herself on bringing art and beauty into the world through her pieces. 

The next time Clarke saw him, she was halfway done with her second commissioned piece and a third of the way down the menu of the Lodge. She was lightly sketching, trying to gather the inspiration to finish the piece. This piece had actually been commissioned by the city, but paid for by an anonymous art patron the mayor was supposedly friends with. The theme was forgiveness (Clarke tried not to think of her mother, because… yeah). 

Sometimes, it was hard to find inspiration for her work. It was a hazard of working in the industry she did. She would go weeks without feeling the actual push to paint or sketch for her commissioned pieces. She called it The Block. Clarke imagined it was pretty synonymous to writer’s block that kept authors from finishing their books. When The Block happened, there wasn’t much to stop it. She would just sketch whatever her mind came up with, instead of pushing to finish one thing. She worked better when she wasn’t stressed.

Clarke considered herself lucky that she wasn’t experiencing The Block for this commissioned piece. She loved the ability to work without any constraints, and although there was a theme she was supposed to stick with, it didn't cap her creativity completely. She was getting more and more recognition on the west side of the country now that she had actually started to work. The name Clarke Griffin was already pretty well known among the art community on the East Coast from her time there and the networking relationships she made, so it was only fitting that her achievements on the other side be just as well recognized. 

But it wasn't that way yet, and she found that she liked her relative anonymity when she was trying to work. The other Lodge patrons didn't so much as glance at her when she came in, or when she left, and was growing used to the new morning regulars.

Clarke didn't look up as the door opened this time, being so focused there was nearly nothing that could distract her.

Nearly.

But, as she was not surprised to find, his voice was enough to pull her out of her "zone", and as he ordered another drip coffee, this time with a breakfast burrito, She locked her gaze on his backside. As he waited for the barista to heat up his breakfast, he turned, leaning his hip against the counter. She waited a beat before looking down at her paper, just long enough to make sure his eyes were eventually going to reach her, but not wanting to make eye contact (yet).

Trying, (and probably failing) to nonchalantly flip through her sketchbook to find her semi- started sketch of him from last time, she felt the moment his eyes landed on her. It was like a physical touch scorching her skin and once again her cheeks flamed. Don't look up.

Despite her most valiant efforts, she couldn't help herself. She raised her eyes, mind almost desperate to meet his gaze. His eyes were molten lava, darkened with what she hoped was a desire that matched her own. Just as she gathered the courage to maybe offer a grin, maybe say hi, the barista gave him his meal and coffee. He turned around to grab his purchase, as Clarke looked down to her sketch, almost out of breath. Trying to garner enough confidence to try again, she looked back up, only to see him offer her an almost apologetic look, before raising his coffee in acknowledgement and going out the door.

Dammit. She hadn't even gotten a chance to draw him. Clarke usually wasn't so bold, and since before she was trying to keep to herself. In Rhode Island, it had been a bit different, Clarke Griffin was different . There, she had Finn, and the sense of being someone unknown (at least until she was recognized for her skill at the arts), but it was a good anonymity. No one there knew about her father, no one knew about Wells, no one knew that the once- medical- prodigy had let down everyone in her life and was trying to start over. She was just there. She was able to recreate herself, into the confident young woman that the people in Rhode Island knew her to be. Here, back in Arken, she was different, less sure, definitely less confident.

But Clarke knew that she needed to get back in the game. Not necessarily the dating game per se, more just into the rhythm of being someone who comfortable in her own skin, no matter where her geographical location was. She needed to be the Clarke Griffin of art school, even if she was in Arken. 

And she needed to start now.

Clarke took a deep breath, gathering any last bit of courage she had. Once she had calmed down (again), she walked to the barista at the counter.

"Um, so-" she stopped herself, trying not to blush, "This is awkward but does he come in here a lot?" She asked, nodding to where he had just walked out the door. 

The barista smirked. "He's hot, isn't he? You're not the only one to be attracted to that one." Harper, her nametag read, and Clarke barely resisted the urge to throttle her for looking at him (an unusual reaction by her standards, but after Finn and that whole debacle, it made sense if she was a bit proprietary, although she had no right to be over this guy). "But yeah, he comes in here every couple days. Usually Tuesdays through Fridays. About 9 A.M., orders about the same thing every time." Harper laughed. "He's in here almost as much as you are, Clarke."

Clarke started, she didn't know Harper knew her name, but it made sense, she was there so often. She nodded her thanks and made her way to her table to pack up her things. 

She had a plan. It was kind of crazy. Could be a little weird, but it was a plan.

"Harper," Clarke stopped with one hand on the door. "Do you work the next couple mornings?"


	4. Chapter 4

He had decided the Lodge Coffeehouse was now his favorite café in all of Arken. Octavia liked Starbucks, Miller liked Dutch Bros, but the Lodge was the perfect place for Bellamy. The other places were overcrowded, a bit mainstream, plus, the Lodge had the best coffee out of them all.  
   
And God knows he needed the coffee. Especially lately. There hadn’t been a lot of REM cycle going on. The nightmares were getting worse. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw John Murphy. It wasn’t always Miller that Murphy shot in the nightmares. Sometimes it was Octavia, or his mother, or Lincoln. Once it had been Ashley, with Miller watching and blaming him for not saving her. All the people he cared about had starred in the same dream at one point since the shooting.  
   
It started out just the way the real life situation had gone. The full tactical team, with Miller and Bellamy leading the attack on John Murphy’s hiding place, had gone to the Honeycomb. The Honeycomb was a neighborhood in the slums of Arken. It was named as it was solely because of the winding streets. From an aerial map view, the shape of the neighborhood and the streets within it resembled the complexity of a Honeycomb. In the dream, he had one of his friends or family behind him in full tactical gear, like he had with Miller and the actual team, and once again, it was his fault they were shot. One detective had died, all from Bellamy’s mistake. Miller had told him time and time again that it wasn’t his fault. But it was. He had been the one to jump the gun and provoke Murphy into opening fire, and it haunted his dreams.  
   
So he wasn’t sleeping well. And he loved his coffee.  
   
That blonde had been at the Lodge again last time, drawing in a sketchbook. Her focus had enthralled him, such direct attention on her work that nothing could break it. But once he had spoken, Bellamy saw her head snap up in his peripheral. It thrilled him, the idea that maybe she was just as attuned to him as he was to her.  
   
Such beautiful creatures such as the blonde didn’t usually pay attention to guys like him. She was too perfect. So unmarred and undamaged. He knew trying to be in her life wouldn’t be in her best interest, but it wasn’t something he could control. He knew he was going to try, it was just a matter of when.  
   
He had made sure not to turn and meet her gaze immediately, but her eyes on his back were a palpable thing. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end as she looked at him. When he finally turned to meet gaze, it was burning. He had raked his eyes over her features, from her piercing blue eyes, to the beauty mark on her top lip, to the proud tilt of her chin. She was truly, exquisitely beautiful, he thought.  
   
But as he strolled into the Lodge on Thursday morning before his usual 9:30 A.M. shift, she wasn't there. Shaking off his disappointment, he stood in line, texting Miller back, once again giving another excuse to his invitation for a night on the town.  
   
Miller and Ashley loved each other unconditionally. It was amazing to see how much a person could change just from having that total support from their significant other they trust in the world. And Bellamy was so happy for him, so glad that he had that support system. But if he had to say no to a blind date from one of Ashley’s ditz sorority sisters who didn’t know the difference between a homicide and involuntary manslaughter one more time, he was going completely freak out at both the Millers. He wanted that special someone, yes, but he wanted the ability to choose, someone he could connect to.  
   
So he would continue to say no to the throngs of girls that Ashley thrust his way, no matter what her good intentions were.  
   
Bellamy was about to give his usual order to the barista, Harper, when she held out a drip coffee and heated breakfast burrito, smiling mischievously.  
   
"Oh wow, I didn't know I was so predictable." He grinned, she was cute, if a bit talkative when he came in, but that was easily ignored, "Thanks, what do I owe you?"  
   
"Nothing," she giggled, "It's already been paid for."  
   
"By who?" He was puzzled, nobody ever bought his coffee.  
   
"Look on the cup." She turned his cup around to the loopy, bubbly handwriting on the side.  
   
 _Enjoy_  
 _-C (that blonde)_  
 _PS Next time you should say hi_  
   
He couldn't believe it. The only blonde that immediately came to mind was the girl from the Lodge with the blue eyes. "This is from the girl that usually sits there?" He pointed to the chair and table she usually occupied. "Blonde? Blue eyes?"  
   
Harper was nodding before he finished speaking. "Yep."  
   
"'C'. The first letter of her name?" He looked to Harper for confirmation. She nodded again. "Do you know her name?"  
   
"I do. But I'm under direct orders not to tell you what it is."  
   
Bellamy grinned. His mystery girl- no, 'C', was feisty. He liked it. "Really? You can't give me a hint?"  
   
"I can't tell you anything about her name. But," She added when his face fell in frustration, "she didn't say I couldn't tell you anything about her."  
   
"Will you?" He wasn't going to beg, but he really wanted this information. The automatic connection he had felt with this C was tangible, and he wanted the opportunity to explore it.  
   
"Her dad was on the city council when he was still alive. Her mom is Chief of Surgery over at Ark Memorial." Harper grinned. "We went to the same high school- Ark Prep, but I doubt she remembers me. We didn’t exactly hang out with the same crowd. You could say she was something like royalty at Ark Prep, with all the donations her family made to the med program. She was kind of supposed to follow in her mom's footsteps in medicine. But the princess turned into a rebel when she turned 18. Went across the country for school and only recently came back. Used to come in here only at nights, but switched her routine up a couple weeks ago and comes in the mornings."  
   
"What did she do instead of medicine?" He couldn't imagine her as a doctor- he didn't doubt her ability to do something like medicine, with those blue eyes like steel traps- but he wouldn't want to see her expressive eyes so cold with what he assumed was a very trying occupation.  
   
"Nuh uh. That's all you get. You're a detective, aren't you?" She nodded at the badge clipped on his belt. "Do the detective work then." When he glared at her, a glare that had made hardened criminals turn white with fear, she just laughed. "Ha. You don't scare me. I've got to get back to my customers." With that, she turned and went behind the counter.  
   
He ended up walking out of the Lodge with a huge grin on his face, steaming coffee in one hand, and a breakfast burrito in the other. It was starting out to be a good day.  
   
His familiar route to work went by quickly. His coffee was too hot to finish, but the burrito was devoured within minutes, before he even made it into the parking lot of the station. He smiled at the desk attendant before opening the doors.  
   
“Bellamy,” Miller called from his desk. The partners had desks right across from each other, it made discussing cases, or their weekends plans (or lack thereof for Bellamy), much easier when they didn’t have to yell through the station. Miller motioned Bellamy to get to their adjoined desks quickly.  
   
Bellamy weaved his way through his coworkers, nodding at some and ignoring others. It was no secret that Bellamy and Miller were the two best detectives at the precinct, and the competence that made them the best, also gave Bellamy a bit of an attitude. He had no tolerance for idiots, and to be honest, some of the other policemen in at the precinct were complete morons. Subsequently, he chose to ignore those he considered the idiots, that way he wouldn’t get in trouble for hitting them when the said stupid things.  
   
“Bellamy, we’ve got to get to the captain’s office-“ Miller paused, “Wait, why are you smiling like that?”  
   
No matter how hard he tried to stifle his grin, it wouldn’t go away. The blonde girl- no, C- just did that to him.  
   
“Nothing, man, nothing.” Bellamy couldn’t wipe it away completely, but he toned the smile down a bit. “Why do we need to get to the captain’s office?”  
   
Miller looked at his partner speculatively, “I’m going to find out what happened, I hope you know.” When Bellamy just stared at him, still with the tiny smirk on his face, Miller shook his head, and became what Bellamy called ‘hardass Miller’. It was when Miller finally stopped joking around and became serious. And it was usually when they were on a case.

“What does the captain want, Miller?”  
   
“You’re not going to like it.” Miller paused with what Bellamy could only say was dramatic flair.  
   
But his next words made Bellamy’s blood run cold, and the grin finally left his face completely.  
   
“There’s been a murder. It was John Murphy.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so quick disclaimer: I don't hate Murphy and I'm sorry to all the Murphy-lovers out there. I needed an antagonist, and he was there. So I'm sorry. Also! Not all sorority girls are ditzy (I'm in a sorority, actually) so I'm not dissing sorority girls, at all! 
> 
> Anyway, I'm having tons of fun writing this, and I've got most of this planned out, so I'm really excited for the future chapters!  
> Feedback is awesome!
> 
> Enjoy!


	5. Chapter 5

She was disappointed. And embarrassed. Humiliated was too strong a word, but it was pretty freaking close to what she was experiencing.  
   
It had been over a week. Eight days.  
   
The barista, Harper, told her that he had taken the coffee and the breakfast burrito. She had said that he seemed really glad that she had done that, and he wanted to know who she was.  
   
Maybe he was just glad that he didn't have to buy breakfast that day.  
   
Every morning, Clarke would walk into the Lodge, take a glance at Harper before ordering. After the first day, she refused to actually ask Harper if he had come back, but settled for a questioning glance at the barista, to which the girl would usually shake her head with a slight grimace.  
   
No matter, Clarke told herself, it was a long shot anyway. Besides, she probably just imagined the whole thing. Guys like that didn’t go for girls like her.  
   
She knew she was reaching for justification.  
   
And Clarke just wished she could get him out of her head. It was affecting her ability to work.  
   
No, she stubbornly thought on the ninth day of walking into the Lodge and seeing no sign of him, he's not affecting my art, I'm just having a slight Block on it right now.  
   
She refused to let a boy be the reason that she couldn’t work. Again.  
   
(The whole thing with Finn still made her so angry. She had promised herself after she left Rhode Island that she would never let a man affect her art negatively again. They didn't deserve it.)  
   
Clarke was pretty much done with the Forgiveness piece. She was pleasantly surprised at how it was turning out. Not to sound overly conceited, but the caliber of work she produced sometimes astonished even herself. This piece was important to her. Her father had worked in the same building it was being placed in. Clarke had been pretty surprised when the mayor's secretary had called and commissioned her. She knew the people who worked for the city, of course, she had been to way too many city functions to count when her father had been alive. But the secretary had said that the mayor was ecstatic that there was a burgeoning artist in the city, and was more than happy to feature her work in the City Hall building. Clarke knew that it was probably something like pity or sense of duty that made them hire her in the first place, but after they'd seen her sketches, she knew they really liked the Forgiveness painting.  
   
"Good morning, Clarke." Harper chirped as the artist made her way to the counter. "What can I get for you today? Peppermint mocha?"  
   
Clarke smiled ruefully at the barista and nodded. "Maybe I should change up my routine, Harper. I hate getting too predictable." She teased.  
   
"You stopped being predictable the minute you left Arken for the East Coast. Where did you go again? Vermont?"  
   
"Rhode Island, actually." Clarke frowned. "How did you know I went east?"  
   
"I was a year below you at Ark Prep," Harper explained and shrugged slightly, "I don't blame you for not knowing me, we didn't really run in the same crowd."  
   
Clarke's face heated with embarrassment (seemed like that was going around lately). She kind of prided herself on having a knack for faces and names, it came with an artists eye. Ark Prep wasn't that big, she should have known. "I'm sorry, Harper. I should have recognized you."  
   
Harper grinned slightly, "It's alright. Like I said, we had different friends. At that point you were still on the medical track, and I was taking business- oriented classes. No big."  
   
"Still…" Clarke sighed and shook her head, "What do I owe you today?"  
   
Harper's eyes widened and her eyebrows rose as she glanced beyond Clarke. The bells the staff had put above the door for the holidays chimed, signaling someone entering the Lodge, "Um, $3.45 for the mocha."  
   
Clarke sent her a questioning glance as she dug through her wallet. She hated carrying a lot of change, and could probably pay for her coffee in all dimes and nickels.  
   
From the corner of her eye, a tanned, masculine hand reached out with a ten-dollar bill. "I've got it. And a drip coffee, if you don’t mind, Harper."  
   
Clarke stilled, her hands still in her wallet. She knew that voice (it haunted her dreams), but was terrified to turn and see if it was really him. As Harper took his money, grinning so wide Clarke was sure her face was going to split open, the artist turned slowly to face the man who had been screwing with her head for he past nine days.  
   
She wasn't prepared to see him again. He was much more attractive than even her artist's memory seemed to recall him. His gaze slammed into hers as she raked her eyes over his face. This close, the freckles were more prominent, not only lighting his cheekbones, but also over his forehead, nose, even down to his chin. If Clarke ever got the chance to draw him again, she would get so close to see every single last freckle. His eyes were such a dark brown, they almost looked black, but the artist in Clarke could see the small flecks of light chocolate brown highlighted in them. His hair was disheveled, but Clarke thought it only made him look like more of a bad boy, with his black leather jacket to match.  
   
He let Clarke study him while they waited for their coffees. He seemed to be doing the same thing, but neither of them spoke. It should have been awkward, Clarke realized, like really awkward. But it wasn't. For some reason, this male in front of her made her comfortable. It was crazy, insane even, but she wanted to snuggle up to his chest, rest her face in the crook of his neck and just be held by him.  
   
(Finn hadn’t been a big snuggler. Not quite ‘hit-it-and-quit-it’, but close enough that he had only spent the night a few times in their nine- month relationship. And Clarke? She loved snuggling. Yes, she loved sex, but the intimacy after the act made her happiest.)  
   
She never wanted to stop looking at him.  
   
As an artist, Clarke recognized something else though. It wasn't just that his hair was a bit disheveled, it was the dark bags under his eyes, the scruff on his jaw (not that she was complaining because, damn, it made him look good) and the droop in his shoulders.  
   
He was drained. Bone deep tired.  
   
Clarke may not have gone to medical school, but she still had plenty of training, and a steel trap for a mind. She knew exhaustion when she saw it.  
   
This man really needed to go to sleep.  
   
(That urge to cuddle turned into a deep urge to comfort. She wanted to have him lay his head on her chest while she ran her fingers through his unruly hair. She wanted to make him soup and have him fill up her bed while watching old reruns of How I Met Your Mother.)  
   
 _Oh my God, Clarke, stop_. She was sure she was going crazy. Those were not normal thoughts for a guy she didn’t even know.  
   
"Here you go," Harper interrupted her analysis of the intriguing guy in front of her, "Clarke." She added obvious inflection into her voice as she handed Clarke her coffee (the glare Clarke returned could have melted ice), "Detective." She gave the man his coffee with a wink.  
   
Detective? She turned her gaze back on the man. It fit him. She could see it in the way he held himself, despite the exhaustion that was evident. His eyes were soft when he looked at her, but she knew they could harden in a heartbeat. For the first time, she noticed the handgun and badge on his belt. The whole look completely fit him. There was no doubt to her that being a detective was his calling.  
   
It totally did it for her, too.  
   
He was looking at her again. His eyebrows were half- raised, a bit expectant. When she didn't say anything, just continued to gaze at him, he grinned and stuck his hand out. "I'm Bellamy. Hi."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys! 2 in one week. I am actually so obsessed with this that I can't help but write.  
> I've found that I actually have an easier time writing Bellamy than Clarke, I don't know why, but his chapters are going to be longer, but I'm definitely trying to get that word count up on her chapters. I might have to start changing the tags because it's not just going to be fluff anymore in the upcoming installments... So that's fun, be prepared! 
> 
> Anyway, feedback makes me happy! 
> 
> Enjoy!


	6. Chapter 6

"I'm Bellamy. Hi."

He was waiting, maybe not- so- patiently for her to reciprocate. He shocked her. He knew that. But Bellamy had been itching to see her for the past week, and this opportunity had presented itself so beautifully. He knew Harper was watching the whole exchange with a giant grin on her face, but he ignored her.

She surprised him back when she took his hand. Hers was warm, soft. It was so much smaller that his almost completely dwarfed it. There were slight callouses on the tips of her fingers; he wanted to ask about them. Probably something to do with her art.

Yes, she was an artist.

Ms. Clarke Griffin. Daughter to Doctor Abby and Councilman Jake Griffin. 23 years old. Alumni of the Rhode Island School of Design, at which she was well known for her paintings. She had relocated back to Arken after graduating from RISD about six months previous. No criminal record, but one speeding ticket when she was 17.

And yes, he had done a background check on her. 

It was quite easy after Harper had told him that her mother was Chief of Surgery at Ark Memorial. Abby Griffin was actually well known around the precinct. She had sewn up more of his men than he would rather count, including fixing up a broken leg he had a couple years ago. Bellamy just never knew that she had a daughter. 

She didn't look like either of her parents, he didn't think. Maybe her mom's eyes, and stubborn tilt of the chin. Bellamy had never met Jake Griffin, but he had seen pictures. They had the same shaped face, but that was it. Clarke was an entity all her own. 

Being an artist suited her. Now that he was closer to her, he saw the paint stains on her yoga pants, one green streak across the forearm of her sweatshirt. Her art was all over the Internet if you knew what to search. And they were good. Landscapes, portraits, photographic, she was excellent at them all. He thought it was much better than seeing her in a doctor's lab coat. She could probably totally pull off the professional look (he'd actually like to see that. It'd be hot.) But he liked that her hair was in messy bun- Octavia called them fun buns- on the top of her head, she didn't bother with much makeup (he really liked that too, O had gone through a goth phase when she was a teenager, and Bellamy was completely done with all that black lipstick- it had scarred him for life). She was exquisitely beautiful. 

He had spent all weekend researching her. Maybe that was creepy. Okay, yes. It was actually pretty creepy. But he was a cop. Could you blame him?

It also helped him stay awake. 

When he wasn't at the precinct, that is. The majority of his hours for the past week had been spent at the station. He was getting on Miller's nerves and vice versa. Captain Kane had finally ordered them home the day before when he caught Bellamy drooling on his keyboard and when Ashley had barged into the precinct, telling- not asking, like what would be the respectable thing to do- Kane that if "Nathan and Bellamy didn't get home soon, you are going to be personally responsible for my hissy fit". Both detectives were packing up their things within minutes. 

Maybe not so bright eyed and bushy tailed, Bellamy had made his way into the Lodge for the first time in over a week when he spotted her. He had been itching to go the Lodge when he remembered she'd be there, but the case was pulling them in all sorts of directions.

Murphy was volatile and devious. He was a serial killer, and his most recent victim had been a little girl. 

(Miller told him to stop blaming himself; there was nothing he could have done. Bellamy still did.)

"I'm Clarke." Her voice pulled him out of his reverie. He couldn’t possibly think about such horrible things such as John Murphy when Clarke Griffin was still holding onto his hand and looking into his eyes like she was right then. Her voice was soft, melodious and he knew he would listen to her all day if he could. "It's nice to meet you," She withdrew her hand and he immediately wanted to grab it again. "You didn't have to buy my drink." 

He smiled at her as they moved in sync to the sugar and cream station next to the door. "And you didn't have to buy mine last time. Thank you, by the way." He glanced down in an uncharacteristic gesture of shyness before meeting her eyes that were trained on him. "It made my day actually." 

A cute pink blush was spreading over her neck and cheeks and she finally stopped looking at him. "Oh, yeah, um, I- well I just thought, you know," she was stuttering. It was adorable. "You're welcome." Clarke finally finished. The blush was a much deeper red, staining her forehead to her chin. 

"I would have come in sooner to try to thank you, you know," Bellamy said as he poured sugar into his drink. He was trying not to stare at her, but he couldn’t help it. "But I got caught up at the precinct all weekend. This is my first time in here in days." 

"Oh, detective, right?" Her eyes were deep blue, with lighter blue flecks mixed within them. God, she was pretty. 

He cleared his throat and shook his head when he realized Clarke had asked him a question, "Oh, yeah. Like Harper said, detective." 

Very smart, Blake, he thought to himself, you're going to dazzle her with your intellect. 

"Right," she smiled and he swore he felt the world stop. She was actually imperfectly perfect, despite her scrub appearance, and he wanted to give her anything in the world, if only she would keep smiling at him. "That's really cool, actually."

"I like it." He couldn’t focus. Between Clarke's smile, her hair, her pretty blue eyes, the dimple on her chin, the freckle on her lip, pretty much all of her, he couldn't focus on what she was saying. It was very distracting. 

"Hey, Blake," Bellamy was jolted out of his close examination of all of her very perfect features, and surprise lit his face. 

"Miller?"

"Yeah, dude, I had to drop Ashley off at work, and I saw your car. Thought I'd come in and say hi before work." Miller slapped Bellamy's shoulder in that basic, masculine greeting before turning his attention to Clarke. "Hello there." He stuck his hand out, "Detective Nathan Miller."

Clarke took his hand hesitantly, a small (gorgeous) smile playing on her lips. "Clarke Griffin. Nice to meet you." 

Miller wasn't letting go of her hand. Logically, Bellamy knew that Miller probably wasn't attracted to Clarke. He had Ashley, and if she was any indication, Clarke wasn't his type. But the longer Miller was holding Clarke's hand, the angrier Bellamy was getting. They were talking, saying something about him and Miller being partners. They weren't even shaking hands anymore, Clarke's little fingers were holding her coffee, but Bellamy had the sudden urge to grab them, shaking off any remnant sensation of Miller's fingers ever being on hers. He didn't want Miller anywhere near Clarke.

Jesus, Blake, chill out, a little inner voice screeched at him, you love Miller, he's your best friend, he's not going to hit on her. 

But Bellamy couldn't handle it. He knew his possessiveness was ridiculous on so many levels. Clarke wasn't his. At all. But he wanted her to be. Desperately. 

"Okay, we've got to go." He grabbed Miller by the back of the neck and directed him to the door, "It was nice to meet you, Clarke. Thanks again for the coffee last week." He knew his voice was gruffer than usual, and was pretty sure he had a hard look on his face from the surprise he could see on hers. He hated that surprise, but he had to get Miller out of there.

His partner was laughing as they left the Lodge, smiling like he hadn't in a week. "Oh my God. You were about to lose it in there, Bellamy." They both stopped at Miller's car, "Whew, I've never seen you like that over a girl. Who is she?"

"Nobody." Bellamy knew his tone was still brusque, but he didn't care. 

"Oh, come on. She's somebody. The minute I stepped in there, I could tell something was going on." A look of revelation melted over Miller's dark features, "You like her, don't you? That's why you've been avoiding the setups Ash has been calling you about."

Sure, let's let him believe that's the reason I don't want to go out with her friends, Bellamy thought.

"Yeah, that's why." He said out loud.

"Have you asked her out yet?" Miller asked him. When Bellamy shook his head, Miller looked at him in exasperation. "Why the hell not, man? You're obviously into her, she's into you. Go ask her."

"What do you mean, she's into me? How could you tell?" Bellamy knew he saw heat in her eyes, but being 'into him' might be taking it a bit far.

"Oh please. Bellamy, if your clothes were made of ice, they would be melted off you, she was staring so hard." Miller laughed at Bellamy's dubious expression. "I'm serious, man, go ask her. I'll even wait out here." 

Bellamy waited, to see if Miller was kidding. When he continued to look at him with a fairly serious expression on his face, Bellamy sighed. He wanted to, he wanted Clarke, but-

"Before you talk yourself out of it, if you don't go ask her, I will for you." Miller told him, smiling smugly at the expression on Bellamy's face. "But really, Bellamy, you deserve happiness. Go ask this girl out. What's the worst that could happen?"

Before Bellamy could change his mind, his feet carried him to the door of the Lodge. He walked in, nodded to a surprised Harper, before finding Clarke in the corner, her sketchbook open. She was focused on her drawing; she hadn't even seen him come in. In five short strides, he parked himself in front of her. 

"Listen, Clarke-" He stopped when she jumped, a little squeak coming out of her mouth. "Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to, uh, scare you."

Her hand over her heart, with her sketchbook pressed against her chest, she sighed. "You didn't. I mean- I was just surprised a bit, that's all. Wait," She arched one eyebrow, "I thought you left."

"I did, I just- I, well, I wanted to- um," he paused as both her eyebrows shot up this time. Chill, Blake, you can do this. "I wanted to know, if maybe, you might, um, want to go to dinner, some time, with, um, me." He met her eyes, desperately aching to see the deep blue. Desperately wanting her to say yes.

Clarke studied him for a few moments. Just when he thought she was never going to say anything, much less answer his question, she smiled. The room lit up again for a minute.

"I'd love to."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> End note: OKAY YOU GUYS IT'S EVOLVED. This was supposed to be a little drabble/ fluff thing, but it has evolved and is looking to be about 14 chapters and I have the next couple written so I'm onto editing them now. The next chap is so long it'll be broken into two parts (like it's at 6600 words rn and I'm not done), but I'll probably post them at the same time, so keep an eye out for that! (It's just more aesthetically pleasing in 2 parts) I'll probably post the new chaps every couple days, so expect the double decker on Monday!
> 
> In the meantime, here's a little snippet of THE DATE to tide you over until Monday:
> 
> [They drove in silence for a couple minutes before Clarke lifted her head from her hands. Bellamy just drove without saying a word.  
>    
> "I am so sorry." It was barely a whisper, but she knew he heard it when he looked at her from the corner of his eye.  
>    
> "Don't worry about it."  
>    
> She winced. His words were brusque, but she didn't blame him. This was the worst date. Ever. ]
> 
> Enjoy your weekend, friends!


	7. Chapter 7

The date should have counted as a total bust.  
   
Clarke knew that. As she drove to the Lodge the morning after the date, she knew that she should just walk away. Save herself the embarrassment. He probably thought she was a complete psycho. What kind of girl cries on a first date? Not the normal kind. Jesus.  
   
Technically speaking, just by what happened, she should've never wanted to see him again. Mostly out of embarrassment.   
   
She did though.  
   
He was fascinating.   
   
Bellamy Blake. Detective. Brother. Misunderstood, rebel teen turned respectable leader of the community. Hot- as- sin. Thoughtful. Bashful. Cocky.   
   
Such a contradiction. One she was so excited to figure out.  
   
The date had started out fine. Good, even. They arrived outside the Lodge at about the same time (no, she didn't let him pick her up. She barely knew him for goodness' sake), which was always a plus for Clarke. She liked when people were on time.   
   
Clarke had barely managed to keep her mouth from dropping when she saw him. Yes, he was amazingly attractive when she had seen him at the Lodge, with his leather jacket and dark jeans. But this time. WHEW. Clarke was getting a hot flash just thinking about the way she was able to see the muscles in his arms ripple and flex with each movement. He had shaved (she didn't mind his 5 o' clock shadow, to be honest, but either way), and he must have gotten more sleep, because the bags under his eyes were also gone. He had his normal uniform of dark denim jeans, but these ones were nicer than the ones he usually wore (she was NOT admitting that she had stared at his ass to know exactly which jeans he wore for work and which ones he didn't, no she was not). He had a black peacoat on, with the collar (unintentionally) popped. When he had taken the jacket off at dinner, she was treated to a dark gray button up, tucked into his jeans.   
   
He had opened the door for her in his car (he admitted that he borrowed the Mustang from his sister's husband, his car was a POS, he had said. She appreciated the attempt at impressing her). Bellamy had made reservations at a restaurant. He was pulling out all the tricks he'd ever stored up for this date.  
   
It was going great. In the car, because he wouldn't tell her where they were going for dinner (he just winked and said, "you'll see") they talked about their jobs. It was small talk. Ice- breakers. She told him about Rhode Island (Finn didn't make it to that part of the conversation), he told her about his messed up childhood without a father figure (she could kind of relate) and his sister, Octavia. He loved her a lot, she could tell. The cadence in his voice went softer when he talked about O (as he called her) and harder when he talked about her husband, Lincoln. He told her about his partner, Nathan Miller, who she had already met at the Lodge, and his wife Ashley.   
   
He loved with his whole heart. There was no halfway for Bellamy. The people he loved meant more than the world to him, and he would do anything to help them. Clarke couldn't imagine being loved so consumedly. Finn hadn't loved her that way (if at all), and the love of a parent was different than the love of a friend or significant other. Being loved by Bellamy Blake would be like being consumed by fire. It would be warm, comforting even, for a while, but would ultimately wreck her. It would destroy her.   
   
So why wasn't she running?  
   
Because being loved like that would also be the pinnacle of her life.   
   
Anyway, things were fine, until they reached the restaurant. Banyans. The one place she never wanted to step foot in, besides the hospital, ever again in her life. At one point, she had loved Banyans. She went there all the time with her father, with Wells, with the entire family and the Jaha's. Now she wouldn't be upset it if burned down.  
   
She remembered not wanting to get out of the car, praying, begging, that this wasn't where Bellamy wanted to take her. It was a nice restaurant, fairly expensive, but the food was good enough to be worth it. She knew why he took her there. He wanted to impress her (he said as much later in the night, when he was apologizing profusely). If he noticed the change in her demeanor, he didn't say anything (at first), he just raised one eyebrow and opened the car door for her.   
   
Clarke thought she smiled, but it was probably more of a grimace. As Bellamy led her to the door, his giant hand spanning the small of her back, Clarke tensed up more and more. He opened the door for her, and led her to the hostess' stand.   
   
"Reservation for two under Blake." His low voice still sent shivers down Clarke's back, but she was too stressed to enjoy it. The hostess looked at her table assignment paper before nodding and looking to the couple. Her eyes widened a bit and one brow shot up in recognition when her eyes landed on Clarke.  
   
"Of course, right this way." She led them to the table. It was a table Clarke had sat at before, not the same one she had been in when she had found out, thank God, but she still recognized it.  
   
Bellamy was a perfect gentlemen, he pulled out Clarke's chair for her, lightly touching her shoulder when he helped tuck it under her as she sat down.   
   
"Mark will be your waiter tonight. He should be with you in just a moment." The hostess glanced at Clarke, "It's good to see you again, Ms. Griffin."  
   
Clarke just gave a curt nod, "Likewise." She murmured. The hostess stared at her for a couple more seconds before she nodded and turned away.   
   
Bellamy looked at her, probably expecting an explanation as to why she was being a total weirdo and why the hostess had known her. When she didn't offer up any explanation, he sighed.   
   
"Did I do something wrong, Clarke?" He was worried, she could tell by the small wrinkle in the middle of his forehead. "You've been quiet since we got to the parking lot. Do you not like Italian food? I figured Italian food was a safe choice, but-"  
   
"It's fine." She interrupted. Her hands were clenched in her lap, and when she looked down at them, she saw her knuckles were white with strain. Clarke forced herself to relax her fingers and lightly rested them on the table. "I just- this place- I used to come here a lot, before I went to school." Her eyes roamed around the restaurant, noting all the décor changes that had occurred in the last four and a half years. "It just holds a lot of memories for me."  
   
"Why do I get the feeling they aren't good memories?" His eyes were trained on her, not wavering for a second. Clarke didn't particularly want to dig up her history, she had gotten really good at ignoring all the issues she had with places in Arken. But she knew that she owed him an explanation for her bizarre behavior.  
   
"I used to have a lot of good memories about this place. I used to come here all the time with my best friend and my parents." Her lips twitched up in a very small smile, until she took a deep breath and looked at her hands. Steeling herself against all the emotions she usually kept bottled up, she looked at her date. His dark hair just begged her fingers to run through it, and she desperately wanted to sketch his expressive face. Instead, her eyes welled a little with tears, and before she could chicken out, she told him the rest. "But this is the place I was at when I found out my father was dying."  
   
Clarke watched the myriad of emotions run over Bellamy's face. First, pity, then the realization of what this place was to her, then came the horror, embarrassment and finally a look of complete resignation. His big hands went to cover his eyes, elbows resting on the table.  
   
"Clarke. I am so sorry, if I had known-"  
   
"You couldn’t have known, Bellamy." She rushed to assure him. She didn't blame him in any capacity; there was no way he would have known that particular piece of dirty history.  
   
He didn't look particularly reassured, but stayed silent after that. She took that as a sign to continue.  
   
"I was eating dinner with my friend, when I got a call from the hospital, my friend's dad worked there." She didn't mention that it was her mother who had called her. "I kind of, well, I broke down when I found out. Wells, my best friend," she explained at this questioning glance, "he had to practically carry me out of the restaurant. I haven't stepped foot in here since."  
   
Bellamy regarded her seriously for a long moment. Just when she though he was going to stay silent, he rose out of his chair. She opened her mouth to ask him what the hell he was doing, when he cut her off.  
   
"Come on." He held his hand out to her. "Let's go."  
   
"What? Go where? Bellamy," she protested, "It's fine. I'm a big girl, I can handle it."  
   
"I know you are, believe me." He shook his head and clutched her hand gently. "But you're in pain when you're here. I don’t want to be the one to cause you pain."  
   
Clarke melted. Completely melted right there on the floor. Finn had been a sweet- talker and he knew how to manipulate a crowd to his benefit. Bellamy just spoke from the heart, to the point of not caring what other people thought.  
   
She just nodded, with a soft smile on her face. Bellamy helped her out of her chair before regaining hold of her hand. His palms were calloused, rough against the softness of hers. She had strong fingers; it came with the territory of artistry. But his giant paw of a hand made hers feel small and fragile. She liked that feeling. His fingers seemed to fit perfectly between hers, not too wide but not too bony either, like the spaces between her fingers was where his were meant to be.   
   
He smiled at the hostess' surprised expression, mumbling, "I'm sorry, we have to go" as he reached for the door.   
   
And then everything had gone to hell.  
   
"Clarke?" It was a voice she hadn't heard in person in almost five years. Abby Griffin was right behind them, next to the hostess' stand.   
   
The bizarreness of seeing her mother completely threw Clarke off guard. Abby was still a beautiful woman, even at her 53 years. There were wrinkles and crows' feet Clarke didn't remember, and Abby hadn't given the effort to color the few gray hairs at her temple. Clarke knew her mother would smell the same, like oranges and cream, because she hadn't changed her shampoo for the first 18 years of Clarke's life and probably hadn't started since Clarke had left Arken. Abby's slight figure was still in shape, made even more miniscule next to her companion.   
   
It was then that Clarke had noticed exactly whom her mother was standing hand- in- hand with. Thelonius Jaha. The big brute of a man was standing behind her mother just slightly, but his dark hand in hers created a startling contrast that prompted memories of Wells to come rushing back at Clarke. Thelonius looked so much like Wells that Clarke was breathless for a moment. Her memories of the man were fond, he had been like a second father to her, and a steady male presence after her dad had died. But after his son's death, Clarke hadn't been able to look at him without seeing Wells. So she had left without saying goodbye. It was bizarre that they were at Banyans, holding hands no less. But Clarke couldn't bring herself to be surprised. Thelonius had been a huge part of her life after her father died, helping her mother and Clarke all he could. He worked at the hospital with her mom, so it wasn't all that shocking that their relationship had developed.  
   
"Clarke?" her mothers' voice startled out of her reverie and Clarke realized she had been staring at their hands, "Clarke. Oh my God. Clarke." It seemed like the only thing Abby could say, her shock was so great. Abby stepped forward, letting go of Thelonius' hand and raising her arms as if to embrace her daughter. Clarke took a step back, right into Bellamy's chest, ignoring the look of hurt on her mothers' face.  
   
The men with the two Griffin women looked at each other helplessly. Clarke felt bad for Bellamy, he probably had no idea what was going on, and Clarke wasn't offering up any information in front of her mom. The woman wasn't someone she had ever wanted to interact again, much less in front of Bellamy and Thelonius.   
   
"Clarke?" Bellamy was closer than she had realized. He was still holding her hand and she could feel the rise and fall of his breathing against her back. At the sound of his voice, Abby's eyes zeroed in on their joined hands and Clarke readied herself to defend Bellamy at any hostility from her mother.   
   
"Detective Blake." Abby said coolly, "Good to see you again. How's your leg holding up?"  
   
Clarke shot a look at Bellamy. "Wait- you know my mother? How do you know my mother?"  
   
"I'm a detective, Clarke, I got hurt-"  
   
"I was his surgeon two years ago for his broken leg." Abby cut him off; ignoring the glare Clarke sent her.  
   
"You don't get to interrupt him." Letting go of Bellamy's hand and stepping forward towards her mother, eyes spitting fire, she finally spoke to her mom after almost five years, "You don't get to talk to me."  
   
"Clarke, I-" But instead of listening to her mother, Clarke turned and without waiting for Bellamy, went out the door.   
   
She heard Bellamy open the door behind her and his heavy footsteps as he sped up to reach her. He grabbed her arm gently and turned her to face him.  
   
"Clarke. Wait a second." He tried to meet her eyes, but she couldn't meet his. Instead, she shook her head, trying to clear her head. "Just calm down."   
   
"I'm sorry, Bellamy. I'm so very sorry, I-" she paused, trying to gasp for breath. "My mother and I, we don't have the best relationship. Hell, we don’t even have a relationship anymore. There's a reason I went as far east as I could. It was to get away from her."  
   
"Okay, okay. That’s fine," he tried to soothe her, but she was too far gone to recognize his efforts. "We can go, it's completely fine." Bellamy slipped his hand in hers and started to tug her to his car when Abby came flying out of the restaurant and sped towards the couple.   
   
"Clarke, please, you have to listen to me." Abby pleaded, "Please, just don't go."  
   
As Bellamy opened the car door for her, he tipped her face up with his fingertips. "Do you want to talk to her? You can, if you want."  
   
But Clarke was shaking her head before he finished speaking. Her eyes welled with tears, "I can't, Bellamy."  
   
He had lightly wiped the lone tear that had fallen onto her cheekbone and nodded. "Okay." With that, he turned to Abby and Thelonius as they reached the car. "Dr. Griffin, Clarke doesn't want to talk to you right now. I'm sorry, but we're going to go." Without waiting for a response, Bellamy had gotten into the driver's side, started the ignition and left the parking lot. Clarke didn't try to look for her mother in the rearview mirror; she just buried her face in her hands, trying to keep any more tears from falling.   
   
They drove in silence for a couple minutes before Clarke lifted her head from her hands. Bellamy just drove without saying a word.  
   
"I am so sorry." It was barely a whisper, but she knew he heard it when he looked at her from the corner of his eye.  
   
"Don't worry about it."  
   
She winced. His words were brusque, but she didn't blame him. This was the worst date. Ever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So like I said, this chapter is divided into 2 parts, both from Clarke's POV. Posting part 2 momentarily!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part 2!

They had driven for just a couple minutes when she realized where they were. "Turn right up here." She pointed at a side street. She wouldn't have blamed him if he wanted to take her back to her car, but to her surprise, he put the blinker on and followed her directions.

"Where do you want to go?" 

"A spot I haven't been to since high school." When he eyed her dubiously, she smiled a little, "Trust me, detective."

There were two places she wanted to go. A part of her wanted to flee his presence from pure embarrassment. But the other side of her still wanted to spend time with him. They had barely spoken, but Clarke was comfortable with the gruff detective. He had caught her eye for a reason, and she wanted to explore it.

She directed him to the shopping mall parking lot. It was mostly empty, but there were a couple cars still in the spots and food trucks in the back of the lot. When they both vacated the car, she stepped up to him and gingerly held out her hand. She wouldn't be offended if he hadn't grabbed a hold of it. She was proving to be a hot mess, and she wouldn't blame him if he never wanted to see her again. Clarke was a little surprised when he took it. When she looked at him, a slight startled look on her face, he just shrugged with a little smirk and enlaced their fingers. 

She led him to the food trucks. The third one from the end was her destination. 

"'Aco's 'Acos?" Bellamy couldn't hide the skepticism from his voice. 

Clarke laughed. "No. It's supposed to say Paco's Tacos. The P and T burned out when I was in middle school. Paco never got it fixed." 

With their fingers still laced, they ordered. Chicken quesadilla for Clarke and a pork taco for Bellamy. When she went to pull her wallet from her purse, he stopped her with a hand on her forearm.

"Oh, please. Like I'm going to let you pay." He shook his head in fake disgust. "I am a gentleman, you know."

She liked his teasing tone. "Detective, who ever told you that you were a gentleman?" She asked while they waited for the food.

Bellamy pulled his other hand up to his chin and pretended that he was pondering her question. "You're right, Blondie, I've never heard that before."

She raised her eyebrows. "Blondie?"

He grabbed a curl from her shoulder and twirled it around his finger. "It fits, doesn't it?" 

Clarke shook her head in mock exasperation, but her grin ruined her feigned irritation. "Sure, sure. Just grab your food, detective."

Bellamy paid and snagged the food, all the while keeping his hand in Clarke's. When they got to the car, he opened the bag of food to grab his taco. 

"No, you can't eat yet." When he looked at her incredulously, she just grinned. "I know you're hungry. Just trust me a little bit longer."

She directed him farther out of town, past the gas stations and traffic lights towards the farming lands of Arken. After five minutes of driving, Clarke pointed to a dirt road on the left.

"Jaha Road?" Bellamy questioned when he saw the street sign, even as he flicked the turn signal. "If you're going to murder me, there are better places to hide the body."

"Pft. I'm not going to murder you, detective." Clarke let out a snort, "Too much work."

"I'm glad to hear that's the only reason you don't want to kill me." He murmured as the road led up a hill. The terrain was mostly wheat fields, but after a couple hundred yards, it opened into a big grass field with a big tree at the very crest. Clarke directed him up the hill and told him to park by the tree, but not under it. 

"Come on." She grabbed the bags of food and stepped out onto the cool grass. "Will your brother- in- law kill us if we sit on the hood?"

He shook his head and joined her when she climbed up; sitting cross- legged on the hood of the car. (He later informed her that, yes, Lincoln would probably have a coronary if he knew they were sitting, and potentially scratching his prized possession.) Clarke distributed the food and watched as Bellamy rolled up the sleeves of his button up and took his first taste of Paco's tacos.

His eyes lit up and he looked at her in astonishment as he chewed. "That's so good." He took another bite. "No, seriously, that's the best taco I've ever had."

Clarke laughed at his expression of delight. "I'm glad you like it. Wells and I would go get Paco's and come up here all the time after school to do homework. His family used to own the property, that's why it's called Jaha Road, it was his last name." She took a bite of her quesadilla, savoring the cheesy chicken goodness. "The new owner's didn't care if we came up here, as long as we didn't mess around in the crops. Like we would have anyway," she laughed, her memory of Wells strong in her mind, as the boy he once was and the man he would never become, "Wells and I were such nerds in high school. We came out here to do homework, not screw around. We had places to go, things to do." She smiled sadly at his memory, looking down at her food, no longer so hungry.

Bellamy noted her change in attitude pretty quickly and put his own food down. "You said Jaha was his last name?"

She glanced back up at him and tried to smile. It came out as more of a grimace. "Wells died a month after we graduated high school. He had fallen pretty hard and hit his head playing rugby with some friends a couple weeks before, but just thought it was a concussion. He had a brain aneurysm, which caused a subarachnoid hemorrhage." Bellamy's eyes were wide, but she continued. "That's when a blood vessel in your brain bursts. It causes bleeding into the space between the middle lining of the brain and the brain itself." Clarke spoke mechanically; she had researched everything about subarachnoid hemorrhages after Wells died, searching to see if there was a way she could have saved him. "It's common in African- Americans, and proneness is genetic. His mother had died from the same thing when he was ten after a skiing accident."

She could tell Bellamy was speechless. This was heavy stuff for a first date, and a horrible first date at that. Clarke knew she should just shut up- stay on unimportant topics, but the detective somehow made her comfortable to talk about it. His brown eyes were wide and his mouth was opened slightly, like he wanted to say something, but couldn't find the words.

"Clarke, I- that's- wow." He ran a hand through his hair, "That's terrible. I'm so sorry." 

Clarke just nodded in slight thanks. "It was terrible. Wells and I were originally going to go to John Hopkins together for undergrad. But after he passed away, I couldn't bring myself to go. My dad had been killed six months before. All the people I loved were dying around me, and I was having serious issues with my mom, so I packed up and went to Rhode Island." She smiled fondly at the thought of her Alma Mater. "My dad had encouraged me to apply to RISD before he died, just as a back- up plan in case I got to John Hopkins and hated it. I did it just to see if I could get in with my paintings." She shrugged. "Turned out they liked them."

"Your dad sounds like a good guy." He smiled warmly at her, and the compassion in his eyes begged her to tell him more. 

Clarke grinned, caught up in memories of Jake Griffin and how wonderful he had been. "He was. Bellamy, my dad was the best. My mom and I were close, because we shared this love for medicine and helping people, but my dad was my best friend. He's the one that came to all my science fairs and art shows, he bought me my first paint set." She laughed, "My grandmother on his side was an artist too, that's where I get the gene. My dad would take Wells and I out of town to let me paint different landscapes, I would paint and Wells would read a book or something. We would go to Banyans all the time, just the two of us." She nodded at his questioning glance, "That's why the waitress had known me, because my dad and I had gone in there so often, we were practically regulars." 

Clarke looked down at her hands again, "That's why I had such a bad reaction to Banyans tonight. I haven't stepped foot in there since I found out about my dad. It just- it brought back all those memories." 

"How- how did he die?" Bellamy murmured softly. He winced almost immediately after he said it, "I'm sorry, that was rude, you don't have to answer that."

"No, it's fine," Clarke shook her head, "you deserve that much at least, from the night I've made you go through." She looked up at the sky. She had been to this spot many, many times. But every time it still took her breath away. Out here there weren't any streetlights or buildings or anything to mar the night sky. The stars were bright and numerous and even though Clarke knew they were just exploding balls of gas billions of miles away, she still liked to imagine that her dad and Wells were watching over her, smiling at everything she had accomplished.

"That night, it was rainy and pretty late. Wells and I were at Banyans, barely getting into the breadsticks, when my mom called from the hospital. My dad had been out jogging when it started to rain. It was raining pretty hard and really dark. He was on the side of the road on his way home when a car started hydroplaning and hit him. The driver was just going too fast for the weather and pinned him between the car and the street lamp." Bellamy covered his face with his hand in anguish and Clarke could feel tears slipping down her cheeks. "Wells was driving to the hospital, and my mom told me to hurry because she didn't think-" she choked back a small sob, "she didn't think he was going to be make it. I begged her to keep him alive until I got there. We were less than ten minutes away." Clarke paused as Bellamy grasped her hand in his. His gentle reassurance that he was there gave Clarke a small moment of light in her retelling. "When we finally got there, he was already gone. The damage was too extensive." She gripped his big fingers tightly in her own. "He had never signed a DNR- do not resuscitate- so it was my mom's call whether to provide that extra support if he stopped breathing. I had asked her, no, begged her to keep him alive until I got there. She chose not to resuscitate. She didn't let me say goodbye." The last sentence was lost in soft sobs as Clarke curled over their joined hands in her lap. 

Bellamy waited in silence for a few short seconds before removing his hand from hers and grasping her shoulders. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her face into his neck. He didn't say anything as she cried into his shirt, and she was so grateful. When she finally calmed down enough to breathe, she tried to pull away, but Bellamy held on.

"Oh God, Bellamy, let me go." She slumped against him again when he just tightened his hand on her upper arm. "Seriously, detective. Let me go, I'm so embarrassed."

He chuckled softly and ran his hand over her hair in a reassuring caress. "Clarke, I practically raised Octavia. Tears were a daily occurrence in the Blake household." He loosened his grip, only to turn and face her better. He reached over to tuck a blonde strand of hair behind her hair. "Don't be embarrassed. You've been through a lot. To be honest, I'd be more worried if you didn't get emotional while talking about your dad or Wells. They were huge parts of your life, and you loved them. It's natural to get upset."

She regarded him for a moment, before sighing and leaning back to rest her head on his shoulder. He maneuvered them so they were both leaning against the windshield with their legs spread out in front of them. He grabbed her left hand with his right and examined her delicate fingers. 

"Detective, how did you get so good at comforting girls?" she tilted her chin up to look at him. "Do you make that many girls cry during dates with you that it's simply practice at this point?"

Bellamy smiled at that, just a little tilt of his lips that Clarke was coming to recognize as a trademark expression. "Like I said, I practically raised Octavia. I had a lot of practice drying her tears when we were younger." At Clarke's questioning look, he sighed, "My dad bailed on us when I was five and O was just a couple months old. My mom was- well she tried to be around, but she worked three jobs, so didn't manage to spend a lot of time with us." He raised the hand that wasn't holding hers to scratch at his head. "A lot of O's stuff fell to me. Getting her ready in the morning, walking her to school, making sure she did her homework, you know, parent stuff. I didn't mind when I was younger. Octavia was my best friend." he sighed. "But as I got older, I started to resent the responsibility I had at such a young age. When my school friends wanted to go out, I had to stay home and take care of my baby sister. I hated it. I got over it, eventually. Octavia's the reason I became a cop, actually."

"How so?" Despite her emotional breakdown, Clarke found his relationship with his sister fascinating. As an only child, she had been envious of anyone with a sibling.

"I was 19. I was working, bagging groceries at Wal- Mart and absolutely hated my life." He shrugged slightly, the movement jostling Clarke's head from his shoulder, "I had pretty good grades in high school, but there was no way we could have afforded college. Anyway, I had gotten mixed with a pretty rough crowd, but made a name for myself. I was a punk, a stupid street punk." Bellamy scoffed and Clarke could tell he was disgusted with his younger self, "One night, Octavia and I got into a fight. She wanted to go to a party some senior at the high school was throwing. I told her no, I knew the kid, he wasn't a good guy and she was just a freshman. So I told her no and she stomped to her room, all pissy at me and slamming doors." He rolled his eyes, "She was such a drama queen, still is, actually. But after she went to bed, I left to go hang out with my friends. We got drunk and took a couple cans of spray paint to the high school."

Bellamy glanced at Clarke's upturned face and chuckled at the raised eyebrow, "I know, Blondie, I was an idiot. We painted the school and ran when the cops caught us. We got arrested. We had vandalized state property and were underage drunks. They threw us in a cell, more of a scare tactic than anything. I've done that to a few kids since I became a cop." he turned his head back to look at the stars. "One of our friends posted bail for us early the next morning, there was no way I could call my mom, and when I got home, Octavia wasn't there. I totally freaked out. My phone had run out of battery and when I plugged it in I had a bunch of missed calls from her. I called her cell phone and tried calling all of her friends, no answer. Finally, after about an hour after panicking, one of her friends' moms called the house phone. She told me Octavia was in the hospital and they couldn't get a hold of my mom," Bellamy brought his free hand to cover his eyes and grimaced. "She worked nights at a diner and her cell had died earlier that night. When I got to the hospital, she was asleep. Her friend and the mom that had called me were there and sitting with her. Apparently after I had left, she had snuck out and went to that house party. The guy whose house it was was apparently into Octavia and was feeding her drinks all night. She's a total lightweight today and was back then too. He pulled her into his bedroom and tried to get her to have sex with him. She said no and he got angry." Clarke studied his profile and could see the muscle in his jaw clench. "He got angry and hit her. Punishment for saying no, I heard later when Octavia woke up. He was a big guy; he could have done a lot more damage than he did. O left the hospital with a couple cracked ribs, bruises on her face and a concussion from falling. When I was sitting in a jail cell, my sister was getting beat up by some 'roid head dumb ass." His grip on her hand was almost painful, but lessened when Clarke started smoothing her fingers over the back of his hand. 

"She had called me right after it happened, crying, begging me to come get her. Her friends eventually found her, and one of them had a dad who was a cop. He turned out to be captain of the precinct, actually. He still is. They called him to come get her and he took her to the hospital. I'm her big brother, I was who she called when she was in trouble, and I was too fucked up with my friends to come to her rescue." He glanced at Clarke; his dark eyes conflicted with troubles of his past. "That was a turning point. I never wanted to feel that helplessness that I felt when I was sitting at her bedside again. So I dropped my stupid friends, started working another job and joined the Academy after about a year with a letter of recommendation from the cop that had taken Octavia to the hospital. That's where I met Miller, actually. We graduated the Academy together and moved up the ranks to detective pretty quickly. And here we are."

Clarke nestled back into his shoulder, looking at the stars above them. "You're a good guy, Bellamy." She murmured.

He rubbed his thumb over hers and looked at their entwined hands. "Thanks." he said back just as quietly. After a moment, she felt him shift his head and they both looked at the dark sky.

Long moments passed without either saying anything, both lost in memories. Clarke recognized that it should have been an uncomfortable silence. But for some reason, it wasn't. For some reason, she was content sitting there on the windshield of his brother- in- law's car, her hand engulfed in his and her head on his shoulder, looking at the stars. It was easy, being with him. They didn't know each other well, or at all, but she knew they had time for that. Clarke knew like she knew her paints that she and Bellamy had something together that she had never felt before. 

After a while, Bellamy turned his head and looked at her. Without saying anything, she gazed back at him. Up this close, Clarke could've counted the freckles that were spattered across his face. His brown eyes were soft as he observed her scrutiny. 

"Did you know you have really good cheekbones?" She closed her eyes the second the words came out of her mouth. Oh my God, Griffin. She didn't mean to say it; it just came pouring out of her.

"Excuse me?" He raised his eyebrows.

"Your cheekbones." She stammered to explain. "Artists love to draw cheekbones like yours." Clarke sat up and gestured to her own face. "My cheekbones, they're alright. But yours, yours are sharp and strong and your jawline is to die for. "

"Blondie," Bellamy sat up to join her, "are you saying that you think I'm attractive?" he was almost aggressively smirking now, and Clarke pressed her palm to her forehead.

"Oh, shut up, detective. You know you're attractive." She sputtered, "I'm simply stating that you are an aesthetically pleasing model. Girls in my art classes back at RISD would kill to have a chance to draw you."

"Well, Blondie, all you have to do is ask." When she just shook her head with a grin, he chuckled. "C'mon. We should probably head back, Lincoln is probably having a heart attack that his car isn't back by now."

They grabbed the remnant wrappers from their dinner and climbed back in the car. Bellamy kept hold of her hand as he started the drive back to the Lodge. 

"What kind of music does Lincoln have in here?" When Bellamy shrugged, she reached over to turn up the CD player.

The beginning chords of a cover of Can't Help Falling by Elvis filled the car. The first chorus of "I can't help falling in love with you" made Clarke stiffen. Of course, it's this fucking song, good Lord. As the song progressed to the line, "some things are meant to be", she could feel Bellamy looking over at her, but she kept her gaze straight ahead. 

When the song ended, the first awkward silence of the night filled the air. Neither of them said a thing. Then the chords of the next song began and they both started laughing loudly.

"Oh my God, why does Lincoln have Mamma Mia on a playlist?" Clarke managed between gasping breaths. "Is he a secret lover of musicals?" 

"I have no idea." Bellamy said, "But you better believe I'm going to give him so much shit next time I see him." 

With the awkward silence dispelled, they listened to the rest of the tracks on the CD, theorizing why Lincoln had not only Mamma Mia, but songs from Wicked, Lion King and Rent as well. (Clarke thought it was a guilty pleasure that he only indulged in when he was driving the Mustang, Bellamy thought Octavia had probably burned him a CD when they began dating and he never took it out.) 

When they finally reached the Lodge and Clarke's car, Bellamy turned off the car and looked at her. They locked eyes and she was sure he was going to kiss her. His eyes were dark with intent, and he was leaning towards her. Clarke's eyes had just started to flutter shut when she felt him shift back. She opened her eyes just as he gruffly cleared his throat and opened his car door. As he walked around to open her door, she straightened and prepared herself. He was probably realizing what a total train wreck she was, she thought, I'm a girl that can't even make it through a single date without completely breaking down. 

She smiled tightly at him as he helped her out of the car and walked her to her small pickup truck. "Thanks, Bellamy, really. Thanks for listening and thanks for the food. I'm sorry it was such a mess."

His lips tilted into the trademark grin, "No problem, Blondie, it wasn't that bad at all." He looked like he wanted to add something to that statement, but after a couple seconds of silence, Clarke cleared her throat and unlocked her car door. 

"Well, um, okay. I guess I'll see you around." She climbed in her car.

"Yeah, see you around." He took a step back as she started the ignition, then turned around. Just as he got to his car and she put her pickup in drive, he turned and jogged back to her. 

"Clarke," She rolled down glass and he put his fingers through the open window. He seemed nervous and a little out of breath. "Look, you know, despite the beginning of the date, I had a really good time." He cleared his throat, "I completely understand if you don't, but do you maybe want to grab coffee tomorrow morning? I work at 9:30, but I could have time to have a cup with you before I have to go in."

Clarke stared at him in wonder. After all that, after she practically had a panic attack at the dinner table, after she had made a spectacle of herself with her mother, after bawling on his shoulder (and it was only the first date for heaven's sake), after everything, he wanted to see her again. She placed her hand over his on her door.

"I would really like that, detective." 

His smile was glorious and so full of elation that she couldn't help but reciprocating with a grin of her own. He leaned through the open window and pressed a dry kiss to her mouth, hovering for a second after their lips parted. "Good." He whispered, and she could feel his hot breath against her skin.

Bellamy turned and strode back to the Mustang, waving at her as he stepped in. "I'll see you bright and early tomorrow, Blondie." He called as she drove out of the parking lot. 

As Clarke turned the corner to go onto her street, she put her fingers against her lips and she knew. She knew this was going to be a hopeless battle. Falling in love with Bellamy Blake was going to be the easiest thing she had ever done in her life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. That was actually really fun to write, all the drama and whatnot and I've been super excited to post it. 
> 
> As some may know, finals week is coming up for us college kids, so my schedule is going to be a bit hectic. I've got the next chapter mostly written, and it should be up on Wednesday, but after that, it might not be so regularly scheduled updates. 
> 
> I love to hear feedback and I do have a tumblr if anyone wants to chat (about anything really, Bellarke, food, whatever you want) 
> 
> Enjoy!
> 
> EDIT: I got help with Bellamy's outfit for the date from the lovely mercurylunacies on tumblr. Sometimes the words get jumbled in my head, and she really helped me out for that one!


	9. Chapter 9

After the horror of the first date, Bellamy wouldn't have been surprised if Clarke had never wanted to see him again. Every time he said that later in their relationship, all she did was smile gently, put her hand up to his cheek and say, "I never had a choice. You were it for me."

Bellamy didn't know how that was possible. The whole thing was terrible. If your date cries, you can't consider it a win. When he had gotten home that night, there were voicemail messages from Miller and Octavia, both wondering about the date. He didn't want to call them back out of pure embarrassment.

But despite the awful thing that was their first date, Clarke still came to the Lodge the next day. She sat with him before he had to go to work, both awkwardly ignoring the night before, making small talk. When Bellamy said he had to go to work, she had stood up, kissed him on the cheek and told him to be safe, have a good day, and call her when he was off work. 

(It was nice having someone to call after work)

And that's how the relationship started. He wasn't proud of that first date. But for some reason, after about five months, he didn't mind the story anymore, especially since it brought him Clarke. 

When she said she didn't have a choice, he realized he didn't either. 

They slept together for the first time after their eighth date. When Clarke had invited him up to the apartment, he thought he was going to puke from anxiety and excitement. It wasn't like they hadn't been intimate before (Clarke was good with her hands, and Bellamy was particularly good with his mouth), just not all- the- way intimate. Clarke reverted him back into a horny teenager who couldn't keep his mind off getting her naked. She made him anxious. He wanted to please her, make their first time all about her. But a guy can only take so much pressure and buildup before he explodes. He was worried he was going to ruin their night, and while he knew Clarke wouldn't judge him or be mad (she just wasn't that kind of person), he didn't want that to be the base for their intimate relationship. But Clarke simply smiled at him, told him to relax and kept kissing at his neck, nipping her way up his jawline before she reached his mouth. His body followed her direction, calming down. He still burned for her, but it wasn't an urgent need any longer. 

The rest of the night was spent romping in the bed, and in between their many bouts, he would pull her close, run his fingers through her blonde curls and listen to her heartbeat. 

(He never had an issue about making love to her again)

It wasn't always sunshine and roses. They fought. Bellamy worked long hours, and Clarke sometimes worked until 4 A.M. He didn't like it when their sleep schedules didn't corroborate. They liked to go to sleep together, she would be the little spoon, and he would curl around her as if he was protecting her from anything and everything that could possibly get her. (She liked that feeling of being practically smothered, she said to him one morning when he woke up sprawled on top of her, it made her feel protected) Sometimes he would go to her house pissy after work (they were still working the Murphy case, and the son of a bitch had killed three more people), and she didn't like negative energy in her space, especially when she was working. They would yell, she would order him out of the apartment and he would slam the door as he stomped out. 

The first time that happened, two months in, Bellamy only made it three blocks before he turned around. When he knocked, there was no answer, so he figured she was punishing him. It wasn't until Clarke made her way through the outside hallway to her door, dressed in her oversized coat, sweats, and a paint streak down her cheek that he realized she hadn't even been the apartment and he had been waiting outside the door for 15 minutes for nothing. But when she wrapped her arms around his waist and told him that she had gone to his house to apologize, he forgot those 15 minutes. They spent that particular night wrapped up in each other, whispering apologies and sweet nothings with her hands in his hair, smoothing it away from his face. Usually, he made her feel safe, but in moments like those, he knew she would protect him with her last breath. 

She explained to him her relationship with her mother, or lack thereof, in one of those warm, hidden- under- the- covers moments. He held her close as she told him how she left without saying goodbye. Bellamy knew it tore her apart to be without Abby Griffin, but his Clarke was much too stubborn to be the first one to extend an olive branch. When she talked about her dad, her face would soften, and he couldn't help but thank Wells in his head for being there for her when she needed him most. After the first few months, Clarke talked about them both more regularly, and Bellamy knew it was a sign of being comfortable with him, sharing those moments. She still got sad about them both, but her shaking would subside and her tears would dry as he held her to his chest, tucking her face into his neck and resting his cheek on her forehead. He loved those moments, when he could feel the affection rolling through her, making both their bodies warm with something he had never felt for a woman before. 

Bellamy told her he loved her on a random Tuesday at around the five-month mark. (She told him later that it was actually the anniversary of the day she first saw him. She looked down at her hands in embarrassment at that admission, but he thought it was amazing that she remembered) It was a rough day at work. There had been another murder, this time a little boy was found on the side of the highway, with all of Murphy's MO's at the scene. It was terrible. All day, Bellamy had been on edge, driving Miller and Kane absolutely crazy. Murphy had been getting bolder; each murder was taking place in a relatively public place, most during the day. There was no rhyme or reason to his victimology that the detectives could see. The people he was killing were chosen at random, it seemed. 

So Bellamy had been stressed. He didn't even know what he wanted to do until he found himself driving to Clarke's apartment, taking the stairs three at a time, and banging on her door (obnoxiously) until she answered with an annoyed huff. Clarke barely had time to greet him and ask him what the hell his problem was before he pulled her into his arms, ducking his face in the crook of her neck and breathing in her soft, warm, (safe) smell. She must have realized that something was wrong, because she slowly brought her arms up, one around his waist, the other on the back of his head. After a few minutes and without saying anything, he had picked her up and took her to the couch, keeping her on his lap with both legs on either side of his. This time, he tucked her face into his neck with a hand on the back of her head and wrapped the other around her waist, keeping her locked to him. He was still tense, replaying images of all of Murphy's victims in his mind, instead of the actual victims; it was Clarke he was imagining on the coroner's table. It could have been minutes or hours, but she finally pulled her head back and looked him in the eye. 

With both hands up around him, playing with the curls at the back of his neck, she had asked if he was okay. He didn't even think about saying it. It had been something he had been feeling for a while, but he didn't want to freak her out with his possessiveness or protectiveness. He knew about Finn, about Wells and her father, he knew that Clarke didn't trust guys that she loved to stay around (by choice or not), so he didn't want to rush her at all. But something had snapped when he saw that little boy on the highway, and he didn't want to go a minute more without letting her know that she was it for him, that he was forever hers. He said those three little words, watching her reaction like a hawk. But Clarke had just smiled gently at him and leaned forward, nuzzling her nose into his neck and breathing him in. Just when he thought she had fallen asleep (she'd been still for a while) he heard her whisper back.

"I love you too."

The subject of moving in together didn't come into play until Clarke's lease to her apartment was up. They'd been dating for nine months, and to be honest, Bellamy had never been happier. He knew their relationship was going kind of fast (Clarke had said that before him, she was a slow mover when it came to relationships. Bellamy hated Finn. He had ruined her trust in the opposite sex so badly; it took all of Bellamy's effort to build it back up). 

But it wasn't something either of them could control. They consumed each other. Not in the unhealthy way, where the two people are just so obsessed with each other, it gets kind of gross. No, this was the kind of thing that romance novels were made of (not the cheesy kind). For the first time, he found himself realizing that 'forever' with someone (with Clarke) sounded like the best idea in the world. She had integrated herself so fully into his life that there was no way he could untangle himself. Octavia absolutely adored her and Lincoln thought she was funny. Miller and Ashley were always so excited that Bellamy would join them for drinks now, with his own date. The people he loved, loved the woman he loved. The pieces of his life were coming together, and at nine months in, he could barely remember a time when he didn't love Clarke. She was the love of his life.

And it only made sense that the woman he considered 'his person' would live with him, share his space. They already spent more nights together than apart, and he loved that moment of waking up with her, when she would still be sleepy and cuddle into his neck, grumbling about staying in bed all day and he would just laugh softly and run his hand through her hair and down her back. (Clarke was a sprawler. She would go to sleep all cuddled into his side, then wake up taking up the entire bed, usually with one [or both] legs entwined with his with her arms in starfish formation. He loved it.) So when she mentioned her lease over breakfast at the Lodge one morning, he nonchalantly said, "Well, just let it run out, you practically live with me anyway” without even looking up at her. When all he heard was silence, he glanced at her with a smug little grin (he loved when he rendered her speechless, it happened more in bed than in their daytime conversations, but what could he say, he had skills). After seeing that he wasn't treating it like a big deal, she just shrugged and said okay. A month later, Bellamy helped his now- live- in girlfriend move all of her crap out of her apartment. 

That's how he found her old sketchbook. Bellamy vaguely recalled the one she carried around the first couple times he saw her at the Lodge, it had a brown leather cover with her signature on the first page. He didn't mean to look at the drawings inside (really, he didn’t, it was an accident), the page just 'accidentally' flipped open. The first couple drawings were sketches of works he recognized from their first couple weeks together. One of them was hanging at the city hall. But then the pages turned to portraits. Portraits, he realized, of him. They were all dated, from back to that very first Tuesday, all the way to just three weeks previous. There were hundreds of sketches. Him sitting down, laying down, pouring over case notes at the kitchen counter, at the Lodge, sleeping, tons of poses that he never knew she was drawing. 

He knew his girlfriend was talented, she had told him enough about her adventures in Rhode Island that he knew she could be in art galleries all across the country. But this was amazing. He was still looking at the sketchbook when she burst into the room, boasting proudly that she had put the last box in the moving van. When Clarke saw what he had in his hands, she froze. She kept glancing from the sketchbook to his face, trying to gauge his reaction. 

"Did you look?" She had whispered, that telltale blush creeping up her neck, blue eyes wide. 

When he nodded, she closed her eyes in apparent anguish. Before he could blink, she was across the room, trying to wrench the book from his hands. He had raised his hands up high, higher than she could reach and laughed while she tried to jump and grab it (it wasn't the first time he had thanked God for his height, Clarke really liked him to get the dishes from the top shelf when they had nice dinners with Octavia and Lincoln).

She had finally stopped struggling and jumping up and down and when she finally said "please Bellamy" with her pretty blue eyes all wide and adorable, he had consented, giving her the sketchbook. She clutched it to her chest and told him not to get a big head; it was the cheekbones thing and he was just an easy model. He had nodded, trying to keep the smug grin off his face, and just said, "they're good, Clarke. You don't have to be ashamed of it". When she looked at him in surprise, because she had been expecting a crap- ton of teasing (this was Bellamy Blake, after all), he continued, "I'm your muse, it's only natural that you can't help but draw me" and he proceeded out the door, kissing the top of her head as he passed her, and carrying the last box that tied her to that apartment. 

(The next morning, as he got out of the shower and Clarke was still fast asleep in their bed, he saw the sketchbook open on the dresser. On the very last page, there was a drawing of him that he hadn't seen the day before. It had been dated to that morning, of him fast asleep, stomach- down on the bed and arms curled underneath his pillow. The alarm clock in the background was set at 4:03 A.M. In the bottom left corner, there was her signature, and underneath it, the words "My Muse” written in her loopy handwriting. Before he left for work that morning, he had crawled over the bed, pressing soft, little kisses to her face until she grumbled and swatted him with her little hands. 

"What, Bellamy?" She had grumbled, eyes closed and still trying to swat at him.

"I love you, Clarke, more than anything in this world." He had said seriously, capturing her fluttering hands with his and holding them against his chest as she opened her sleepy blue eyes. "I really, really love you."

Her frown of discontent had softened into a gentle smile, and she pressed her lips to his in a feather light kiss. )

Three months after their one- year anniversary, Octavia met him for coffee at the Lodge (he had converted her from Starbucks months ago). Clarke was at a meeting for another set of commissioned pieces (her name was really getting out into the community, she was getting more work than ever). In typical Octavia fashion, she was late, flustered and grinning widely when she saw her big brother.

After they hugged and ordered their drinks, she sat him down at one of the tables. But small talk had never O's forte, and Bellamy knew she had something on her mind. With her, it was better to just get it all out. 

"Spit it out, Octavia."

"What?" She had a look of (fake) puzzlement on her face that slowly turned into a wry grin. "I have no idea what you're talking about, big brother." 

"Whatever, O. Just let it out." He raised his eyebrows (another trait he had picked up from Clarke).

She eyed him dubiously for a second. The bond between he Blake siblings was strong, he had practically raised her, after all. But that didn't stop him from giving her his patented 'detective glare' when he thought she was being dumb.

"When are you going to propose?" The question came out slowly, like she was choosing her (simple) words carefully. 

Bellamy looked at her blankly. It wasn't that the thought hadn't occurred to him. It had. But he considered Clarke such an integral part of his life already that tying her to him legally had just seemed like something that 'was going to happen, eventually'. They both knew each other was it. He was hers, wholeheartedly, and the same vice versa. Of course he wanted to marry Clarke. He just hadn't thought that it was necessary right then. To him, they had time. 

"Bellamy?" Octavia was waving her hand in front of his face. "Are you in shock? Did you go deaf? I know Lincoln has selective hearing, but I never thought I'd have to deal with it from you and-"

"Octavia. Stop." She raised an eyebrow (his sister was spending too much time with Clarke), "I was just surprised. I haven't thought of it." 

"You haven't thought about it?" She looked at him incredulously, "Are you going to do it at all?"

"Of course," Bellamy shrugged, "I didn't see the need to rush."

Octavia rolled her eyes dramatically and grabbed her brothers' hands. "Bellamy, look, I love you, but you can be so stupid sometimes. Clarke is your soul mate," he liked the sound of that, "you belong together. She's expecting you to propose any day now and you haven't even thought about it. Do you- are you having doubts about the relationship?" She kind of winced when she said the last part.

"No! Of course not. Octavia, you're right, Clarke is my soul mate. She's the one. It's just not something I've thought about doing right away. To be honest, I've been saving money since our first date for this. There's nothing wrong with my relationship. I love Clarke, more than I can even handle sometimes."

"Then when are you going to do it? I never thought you'd be a chicken about it, especially with her."

Bellamy looked down at their joined hands. They were similar, their mother's hands, Bellamy's were just bigger. Square fingernails, Octavia's were longer than his, but they both had the tendency to bite them when they got anxious. He had a feeling his would be down to stubs by the time he proposed.

"I'm not a chicken, O, I just-" He shook his head, trying to get the rambling out of his mind. "Okay, you win. Will you help?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't have much to say about this chapter except that I ADORE FLUFF. And cute, in- love Bellamy makes me happy.
> 
> As always, I super appreciate feedback and love hearing what you guys think!
> 
> Enjoy!!


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello hello hello! 
> 
> This chapter has been sitting in my word doc for weeks because I knew exactly how I wanted it to happen, I just had to match up the previous chapters. But FINALLY here it is!
> 
>  
> 
> Thank you so much to everyone who keeps commenting and kudos-ing. You guys totally make my day and I laugh out loud at some of your comments. 
> 
> As always, enjoy and keep on keeping on:)
> 
> p.s. Sorry about the ending. Next chap will probably be up on Sunday!

"It's never going to happen, Octavia. I just don’t understand him sometimes." Clarke complained. She was walking home, sketchbook in one hand, the other one holding her phone to her ear. "I don't know what other hints I could possibly give him. I just want to get married, dammit."

They had been together for a long time. A year and six months was a long time for Clarke. And Bellamy had shown absolutely zero sign of ever wanting to propose to her. Clarke was getting frustrated.

"Clarke, it's fine," Octavia soothed. "My brother is always slow- moving. I'm sure it'll happen, eventually."

"I don’t want it to happen eventually-"

"Listen, Clarke, I need to go, Lincoln just walked in." Her boyfriend's sister said, "Just stop worrying. Bellamy loves you, there's no need to panic. Okay? I love you. Talk to you later."

"Easy for you to say," Clarke muttered as she walked up the front porch steps, "You're already married. Psh. Stupid Octavia." she kept muttering as she unlocked the door.

Clarke loved living with Bellamy. She loved waking up with him each morning and snuggling close every night. She loved that she could now draw him whenever she wanted, and that he supported her unconditionally. Bellamy was the sole reason she had stayed in Arken so long. Clarke simply loved Bellamy. He was her best friend. He belonged to her, in a way that no person had before. But the stupid man would not propose.

Clarke desperately wanted to get married. The urge had started right after their one- year anniversary. Then she began looking at wedding boards on Pinterest, and everything had gone to hell. She wanted the big white dress; she wanted to feel like a princess for one day. Of course, ideally, she wanted her father to be the one to walk her down the aisle, with petals at their feet. That wasn't possible, and it made her sad. But she was slowly realizing that the family she had made for herself, with Bellamy, Octavia, Lincoln, even Miller and Ashley, was worth every bit as much as what she had with her mother and father. Both Miller and Lincoln had become like brothers to her, and their wives like her sisters. Along with Bellamy, she couldn't imagine ever living without them. Having them at her wedding would make it perfect.

Thanks to her handy- dandy friends on Pinterest, Clarke had her whole wedding basically planned… If only she could convince the guy in question to propose.

(It wasn't that she wasn't happy with the way things were going. She loved everything about her life. She just wanted… well, Bellamy.)

She noticed the house was eerily quiet as she unlocked the door. Bellamy had stayed home on this Friday, despite the case they were still trying to get a handle on at the precinct (Clarke hated John Murphy almost as much as her boyfriend did. She hated that he made Bellamy tense and stressed and not himself. She hated that he was killing innocent people and that he made Bellamy hate himself for not solving the case sooner). But Bellamy wasn't home, and while it wasn't unusual, she didn't control him; it was a bit odd because he had made her promise to be home by 3 that day so they could have a movie night.

As she walked up the stairs to their room, she did notice that the house was completely clean. 100% spotless. The floors were vacuumed and mopped, the counters in the kitchen were wiped down, and Clarke could even hear the hum of the washer and dryer in the laundry room.

God, I love that man, she thought. Clarke loved a clean house, and Bellamy usually wasn't so keen to help her keep it tidy. If he wanted to help her out on this random occasion, she would take what she could get.

She reached the bedroom and noticed only one thing out of place in the entire room. On the bed, there was a deep purple dress, a beautiful pair of dark gray pumps, and a (gorgeous) black, lacy bra and matching panties that didn't leave a lot to the imagination. As Clarke held them up to her body, she wasn't really surprised that they were the right size (Bellamy had made it a study to explore those parts of her body, intimately), but she was surprised with the whole ensemble. Bellamy's idea of romantic was usually buying her a nice bottle of wine and bringing home a romantic comedy at the end of a long workday. Clarke loved the downtime, but she had a feeling this time was going a bit different.

On the nightstand, there was a cup of coffee from the Lodge. As she took a sip of it (yum, caramel latte, her favorite), she noticed Bellamy's signature, almost unintelligible writing on the side.

_Hi_  
 _-B (that brown haired guy)_  
 _P.S. Go into the bathroom._

She chuckled and rolled her eyes. He was replaying the first time she had bought him coffee. It seemed like such a long time ago, but it was less than two years before. Clarke couldn't believe how much her life had changed. She had a wonderful boyfriend, amazing friends, and her art was gaining speed in the art community of the west coast. Life was good. If only she could get him to propose…

As Clarke reached the bathroom, she found another note stuck to the sink. What really caught her attention, however, were the absolutely beautiful pair of earrings and necklace on the counter. The earrings were simple diamond solitaire studs, with an understated matching necklace. Clarke put her hand to her heart as she examined the jewelry. They were both so incredibly beautiful; it was bringing tears to her eyes.

Her attention turned to the note, as Clarke was trying to find some rhyme or reason to these beautiful new gifts.

_Babe,_  
 _Get ready, we're going out tonight. I'll be back by 6, reservations at 6:30._  
 _I love you,_  
 _B_

Clarke laughed. Someone had definitely been taking lessons on romanticism and how to woo their girlfriend. But she followed his instructions. Taking time to shower, shave her legs and other unmentionables, lotion herself all up, and putting makeup on wasn't something Clarke indulged in frequently. She usually only got all gussied up when she had to meet with someone about her art, or for any other special occasions. She usually didn't mind that Bellamy didn't take her out that often. He worked long hours and his work was arduous. Clarke understood that at the end of the day, he just wanted to sit down and just be. But that didn't mean that she didn't enjoy the whole process every once in a while.

Clarke felt unbearably sexy as she slipped on the lingerie Bellamy had picked out for her. Most of her bras were made for comfort and functionality. These were not. The lace was still comfortable, and the bra supported her where she needed to be supported, but she felt almost like a different person as she looked at herself in the mirror. The woman in front of her was mature, confident, and downright sensual, something Clarke Griffin usually couldn’t claim. The cut of the dress was just right to show off her new necklace and even though her hair was down and curled, she could still catch glimpses of sparkle of the new earrings as she moved. The pumps weren't too high, and they were actually pretty comfortable (grace in heels was another thing Clarke usually couldn't claim).

At 5:58 the doorbell rang, just as Clarke was putting on the last coat of lip-gloss. It was silly, she thought, that he would ring the doorbell to his house, but she didn't want to ruin his so- carefully- planned night. Bellamy's mouth dropped a little when she opened the door. Clarke wanted to do the same thing. Her boyfriend looked hot.

He was clean- shaven; all trace of stubble that had been building up for the last few weeks was gone. He had gotten a haircut too, those stray curly locks that had been falling in his eyes no longer. He was wearing a suit. (Bellamy Blake did not wear suits. The only time Clarke had seen him in a suit was for the annual spring formal dinner hosted by the city for the precinct, and he had stripped those clothes off in a hot minute once they had gotten home). But she almost wished he wore suits more often. It was a dark charcoal gray color, matching her heels perfectly, with a black tie and white button up underneath. He was wearing shiny black shoes that she knew he hated (he preferred his work boots to anything but the fuzzy slippers Clarke had gotten him for Christmas the year before), but he looked damn good in them. She could see the slight bulk of his ankle holster on his right leg. He was on call tonight, so he had to have his handgun on him.

When he finally stopped drooling over her, he smiled softly. "Looking good there, Blondie."

After she shut the door behind her and locked the door, Clarke reached her hand out to his, "I could say the same for you." She said lightly. He took her proffered hand, tucking her fingers in the crook of his arm before leading her to the car.

He held the door open for her and pressed a quick kiss to her cheek. Clarke admired his form as he walked around to the driver’s side and slid in. After he started car, he took her hand in his again and kissed her fingers lightly. "Really, Clarke, you're beautiful."

Clarke smiled in thanks and blushed at his compliment. He always said things like that to her, but tonight was different. He was acting different than she had ever seen him. "Where are we going?"

"I can't tell you, babe. It's a surprise." He looked like a little kid, eyes excited and he couldn’t seem to keep his grin off his face.

“Thank you for the dress. And earrings and necklace.” She said, pressing her fingers to the necklace at her chest. “They’re beautiful.”

He just smiled and grabbed her hand. “Beautiful things for the beautiful lady.”

He kept his fingers intertwined with hers as they drove, making small talk about their day and Clarke thanked him for cleaning the house. When he asked if the lingerie fit, she only rolled her eyes and said "of course" while he chuckled slyly.

"It wasn't such a bummer that I had to look through your panties and bras to get the right size." He said with a wink. Clarke laughed and lightly swatted his arm. Bellamy just grabbed her fingers out of the air and pressed a kiss to them.

They drove for only ten minutes before he pulled up in front of a dark, empty building, driving into the parking lot. The building was only a block from the Lodge; she could see the sign from the door. Bellamy went around to open Clarke's door for her, and gently helped her out of the vehicle. He tucked her small fingers into the crook of his arm as he led them both to the darkened building. There weren't many other cars around, and the street was darkened. The smell of wet asphalt drifted up to Clarke's nose as she avoided a puddle left from the rainstorm the night before.

"Bellamy, what is this?"

"Just trust me a little bit longer." He winked at her as he unlocked the door and Clarke recognized her own words from their first date. The building in front of them didn't have any markers, no signs that she could see. It looked like an empty storefront.

Bellamy took her hand and led her inside. The second the door closed, they were engulfed in darkness.

"Okay, detective, what's going on?" His hand was still tightly gripped in hers, but dark spaces had always kind of freaked her out.

"Relax, Blondie, I’m just trying to find… the… switch…" She felt him lean and run his hand over the wall. "Ah, got it."

The room was flooded with light and Clarke gasped, dropping her hand from Bellamy's and putting both to her mouth.

All around her were her paintings. She could see almost every piece she had ever done, hanging in frames on the light gray walls. There were pieces from RISD, from Arken, from high school even. They were portraits, landscapes, picturesque, everything. Without waiting for Bellamy, Clarke walked seamlessly from painting to painting. There were a lot of light drawings from her sketchbook that she recognized. New ones of Bellamy, in addition to old ones of her father and Wells. She stopped at one of Bellamy, the drawing she had started when she had first seen him at the Lodge and finished painting one night as he slept, but in a blown up scale. It was her best portrait of him, she knew she had done a really good job of capturing the laughter in his eyes and she was intimately familiar with every single freckle that was spread like constellations across his cheekbones.

"Bellamy…" She said breathlessly, without turning, "What is this?"

"This, Clarke," he stepped up to her, looking at the portrait of himself, "is your new gallery."

She whipped around to face him, blonde locks flying. "What?" She gasped.

He chuckled and turned, "This is your new gallery." He took her hand and led her around one of the short retaining walls that was in the middle of the room. "You need one. Your work is becoming more popular over here, and you need a space that you can meet clients."

"I- I don't know what to say." She breathed out. She could barely take it all in. This was- this was the best thing anyone had ever done.

"Say thank you, Blondie. Although, no thanks necessary, you deserve it." He caught hand and pulled her towards him, wrapping his arms around her waist and leaning in close. "You deserve everything, Clarke, truly." Bellamy kissed her lightly on the tip of her nose before letting her go. "Come on, there's more."

"How can there be more?" She whispered, trying to take it all in.

He just chuckled and led her to a door at the back of the room. "This will be your showroom, and once you get some more finished works, you can replace the sketches, I just needed some to fill the space. But there's room back here for a studio if you ever have a need for it. There's also a small kitchen for those nights you have to stay late." The door opened to reveal a kitchenette and an adjoining room into what she could only guess was the studio.

In the middle of the room were a small table and two chairs. It was covered by a dark gray tablecloth, tall candles, and set immaculately with dishes. A bottle of red wine sat next to one of the two wineglasses on the table. Bellamy led her to the table and pulled back her chair for her to sit. Once Clarke was settled, he opened the already corked bottle of wine and poured her a glass, kissing the side of her head as he straightened and poured himself a glass.

"Bellamy. This- this is too much. We can't afford this and-"

"We can, actually. Remember how my mom called last December and told me about my dad?" She nodded. Last year, his mother had called and told him the unfortunate news that his father had died. Apparently, he had been in a skiing accident in Aspen. He died in the hospital with no family members with him. Clarke knew Bellamy was more torn up about his fathers' death than he let on, but he refused to talk about it to anyone. "Well, nobody knew this, least of all my mom or me, but my dad was quite the money hoarder. Apparently after he left, he made it big before the stock market crashed and had stowed it away. He didn't have any other kids and lived alone. So when they were going through his estate, they found a will that left the money to O and I. I wasn't going to say no." He shrugged as he picked up his wine glass and took a sip, acting much too nonchalant for Clarke's liking.

"You were going to tell me this when?"

"I couldn't tell you. O got her half, and I paid for this place. And that new outfit. It was a surprise."

"Bellamy. You shouldn't have spent all this on me." She sputtered, "I love it, and thank you so much, but you should've spent it on yourself."

"I didn't spend it all on you." When she raised one eyebrow he laughed. "I didn't. I spent some on you and I put the rest in the kids' college accounts."

Clarke almost spit out her wine. "Kids? What kids?"

"Ours." He was watching her carefully.

"Our children?" She asked. "Where are these children you say we have?"

"Will have." He corrected, leaning forward across the table. "We will have them. Not right now, obviously, you're going to be opening up your new gallery and I have a lot of work to do. But Clarke," he grabbed the hand that wasn't holding the wine glass. "We’re going to have children."

"I know," She stated, putting the glass down and bringing her hand up to fiddle with her necklace. "I just didn't think it was something you were thinking about."

Bellamy leaned back. "I think about a lot of things." He got out of his chair, "Ready for food?"

When she just nodded and looked on helplessly, he opened the oven in the kitchenette and pulled out three dishes. Clarke knew he must have bought them or had Octavia make them because the extents of his kitchen skills were boxed mac and cheese and cold cut sandwiches. One by one, Bellamy carried plates of mashed potatoes, green beans, bread rolls and steak. He served her each dish before serving himself.

Clarke watched the whole thing with a raised eyebrow. This was not the Bellamy Blake she knew.

"What on earth has gotten into you?"

He looked up from his plate where he was cutting his meat, "What?"

"This." She waved her hands around. "All of this. What on earth is going on?"

"Nothing." He took a bite of his meal and the movement of his jaw distracted Clarke. "Can't a guy do something nice for his girlfriend?" He leaned over with a piece of the steak on his fork, "Come on, you have to try this."

She opened her mouth obediently, "But Bellamy," she said between chewing, "This is more than something nice. This is amazing. This is over the top."

"No, it's not. I love you, Clarke, I like doing nice things for you." He took another bite. "Speaking of over the top, what do you think about eight kids?"

He had to stop mentioning their future children so nonchalantly; she was never going to get a full drink of wine down her throat without spitting it all over herself. "Eight?" He nodded. "You want eight kids?"

"I like kids. I'm pretty good with them too." She knew he was, she had seen him with Mrs. Castellano's kids across the street. "Four boys, four girls, almost a full baseball team."

"I was thinking more along the lines of two." She said. "Kids are expensive, and messy."

"That's why we start their college accounts before they're born, build up some interest." He dug into his mashed potatoes. "We can compromise, though. I'm good with six."

"Bellamy Blake, you better believe I am not pushing six children out of me." She didn't want to laugh, but this conversation was so bizarre she couldn't help it. "I saw way too many videos of live births in high school. That is not happening to me six times."

"Fine, I'll go down to four." He said, smiling that patented Blake grin while waving his fork around at her. "But that's as low as I'm willing to go."

She pretended to think about it. "Four doesn't sound so bad. We'll see when the time comes." But she could imagine the kids Bellamy wanted. He would want little blondes with blue eyes; he always told her that he loved hers. But Clarke wanted little dark eyed boys with freckles and little girls with their hair brown and curly like his.

She could see them in her mind's eye perfectly and suddenly she had never wanted anything more.

As they finished their dinner, they chatted and laughed softly, and she liked the way the candlelight played over his features. His eyes were soft and relaxed and she loved the way his eyes crinkled at the corners when he laughed.

When they were finally done, Bellamy kept her sitting down as he loaded the dishes into the dishwasher. He finally finished and blew out the candles.

She leaned against the building as he locked the door to the gallery, watching his beautiful, familiar face, and she knew she would be drawing him tonight.

"Clarke, wait." He pulled her to a stop on the sidewalk outside the door and took her tiny hands in his. "Clarke, I love you-"

"I know you do, Bellamy." She withdrew one of her hands and waved it at the storefront. "This is the greatest thing you've ever done for me. I love it. I love you."

His lips tilted in a bashful grin. "I know you love me, babe, and I'm glad you like it. But let me finish." he took a deep breath. "I love you. You remember a couple months ago, when I had to go to San Diego for two weeks for that conference?" She nodded. "You were on my mind the entire time. It was the first time you and I had been apart for more than a couple days for a year. I didn't- I guess I didn't realize how much space you took up in my life until you weren't there. Every morning, I would reach across the bed to rub your back, but you weren't there, and it hit me harder each time. In those moments, I wished the world was smaller, just so I could get to you." Bellamy scrunched up his nose a little, like he didn't like what he was saying.

"When I saw you again, it was like coming up for air. I could finally breathe again because I could look into your eyes." He let go of her hands to grip her cheeks and kiss her softly, just a brush of his lips against hers. "You know me, Clarke, you know that I don't do things half way. I go all in or all out. I'm saying this to you, I'm all in. Forever. I love you, and I will love you until the end of time. I will love you if I never see you again, and I will love you every day that I do see you. When I think of you and me, sometimes I can't even see myself, I only see you." Bellamy kissed away a lone tear that dripped over onto her cheeks.

"I am fatally in love with you, Clarke. You completely destroy me. You slipped under my skin without me even knowing, you invaded my blood and captured my heart." His own eyes were welling with tears, and Clarke brought her fingers up to catch the overflow. With a small chuckle, Bellamy grabbed her left hand and kissed her palm gingerly. Still keeping hold of her hand, he dropped to one knee in front of her. She couldn't contain the gasp that left her mouth and discovered it was hopeless to stop the tears from falling. Her smile couldn't get any wider, and the blood was rushing in her ears. All Clarke could focus on was the beautiful man in front of her. "Clarke Griffin. You are my soul mate. The second I saw you, I knew you were it. You were the endgame. We are infinite. You make me a better man and I want to spend the rest of my life with you." Bellamy reached in the pocket of his suit jacket and pulled out a little black box. "Baby, will you marry me?"

He opened the box, and in sat the most beautiful ring Clarke had ever seen. On a white- gold band that had little diamonds sprinkled on the lining of the band. In the center there was a princess- cut white diamond and twin similarly cut blue gemstones on either side of the center diamond. Watching Clarke carefully, Bellamy took the ring from the box and slid it gently on her ring finger. It was a perfect fit.

"Clarke?" Bellamy wanted an answer, but she was too enthralled with looking at her left hand she could hardly speak. When she finally at him, he was watching her with his eyebrows raised, waiting for her answer.

But she couldn't say a word. Clarke knew if she tried to talk, she would start bawling. So she only nodded, her smile trembling a little because the emotions were becoming too much for her to handle. She wanted to draw him like this, on his knee, because she knew this was one of the single most important moments of her life.

"Baby, is that a yes?" When she only kept nodding, he finally got up off his knees and grabbed her around the waist, gripping her so tightly she thought she felt her ribs creak. She didn't care. This feeling, being completely consumed and loved by this wonderful man was everything she would ever need in the world. His hug picked her off her feet and he swung them both around, smiling and laughing with such incredulity and joy that Clarke couldn't help laughing along with him. When he finally set her back on her feet, he immediately gripped her cheeks between his big palms and pressed his mouth to hers. As always, his lips were warm and welcoming and in them, Clarke felt like she was coming home.

Bellamy was her home. Wherever he was, that's where Clarke belonged.

When he finally pulled away (and no, Clarke did not whimper at the loss of his mouth, no she did not), he grabbed her hand to inspect the ring.

"I've had this for weeks." There wasn't much light on the street in front of her new shop, so he raised her arm a little to see the ring on her hand. "I was terrified you were going to find it, so I gave it to Octavia to keep for me. But then I was worried she was going to lose it." He grinned at her. "It's been a stressful three months."

"You've been planning this for three months?" Clarke swatted at his shoulder with her free hand when he nodded, "I've been nagging at Octavia because I didn't think you would ever do it. That little brat, she's been laughing at me this whole time, hasn't she?"

Bellamy laughed, it was the most beautiful sound in the world, "Yeah, she called me after she got off the phone with you today, laughing her ass off. She thinks it's hilarious." He studied the ring again. "It's white diamond and tanzanite. It should be able to withstand all your shenanigans in your studio and new gallery." Bellamy smiled when she stuck her tongue out at him. "Look," he said, reaching out fingering the necklace sitting on her chest, "they all match."

Sure enough, the cut of all the diamonds from her new earrings and necklace matched the ones on her ring perfectly. Clarke smiled and sighed. "Bellamy." She had no words. He was simply amazing, "You are so wonderful. I don't deserve you."

He smirked, the trademark Blake expression just another thing on the list of things Clarke loved about him. "Of course you do. I chose you. You chose me. It's simple. I told you," he wrapped his arms around her waist and waited until she brought her own hands up to play with the curls at the back of his neck. "We are endgame. I know you thought it would never happen, but I wasn't in any hurry because I knew I was going to ask you eventually. Of course I was, I love you."

Clarke went up on her tiptoes to kiss him again, completely lost in the sensation of being loved by Bellamy Blake. But the second her lips pressed to his, another voice rang out.

"How cute. Am I invited?"

Bellamy turned faster than Clarke had ever seen him move, completely shielding her from who had spoken. Before she could blink, Bellamy reached down to grab his Glock from the holster. He raised the firearm, leveling it at the man in front of him. Clarke couldn't really see who it was from behind Bellamy, just some of his features. The man was pale, almost sickly looking, with limp strands of brown hair hanging in front of his eyes. Those eyes. Clarke would have nightmares about those eyes. They were empty. Completely void of life. Clarke had gone to a class in high school where she got to see a cadaver. This man's eyes were as cold and hollow as the cadaver's had been on the table. She didn't know who he was; she just knew she wanted to get away from him.

Bellamy's gun was still trained on the man; he was on edge and radiating tension. Clarke had never seen him like that. This was Bellamy as a detective; this is what made him so good at his job. She didn't dare move, Bellamy knew what he was doing and she trusted him. But her blood turned to ice and the hair on the back of her neck stood on end when Bellamy spoke.

"John Murphy, you're under arrest for nine counts of murder."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and thanks to mercuryslunacies over at tumblr again for helping me with the ring description. I couldn't figure out what Clarke would have been into. She definitely helped me out!


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is! This is one of my favorite chapters. It's a little shorter than the last few I've posted (still about 2500 words though), but I really liked writing it. There's looking to be about 4 more chapters before this is wrapped up, so keep a lookout, but my exams start so I probably won't be uploading as regularly.
> 
> As always, let me know what you think and enjoy!

John Murphy. The man Bellamy had been hunting was standing right in front of him. Bellamy had seen pictures of Murphy, old mug shots and the sort, but the man in front of him was a shell of the man in those photos. His was pale, so incredibly pale and his hair was stringy in front of his eyes. 

He looked like shit.

Bellamy was inherently aware of Clarke at his back, her little strong hands clutching at his jacket as he kept his Glock trained on Murphy. Bellamy struggled not to panic. This wasn't supposed to happen. Clarke should never have been in the presence of this monster. Bellamy was torn between engaging with Murphy because he was right there and whisking his fiancé away somewhere safe.

"That's precious, detective," Murphy spat the word at the pair, before reaching to the back of the waistband of his dirty jeans and pulling out his own handgun, leveling it at Bellamy and Clarke. "But I have some plans of my own. You are really irritating, Blake. Did you know that?"

"Murphy, put the gun down, you won't win this." 

"I don't think so, detective. In fact, I don’t think you will ever find me if I don't let you." Murphy smirked, a quick twist of his mouth that made Bellamy shiver. "You didn't even know I was watching that whole thing," he flicked the hand holding the gun around in their general direction and Bellamy could feel Clarke tense up even more behind him. "Congratulations, by the way. Many wishes for the happy couple." He sneered. "Drop your gun, kick it to me."

Bellamy thought fast, Murphy was clearly unstable, and he didn't want the psycho anywhere near Clarke. They were at an impasse. Bellamy knew Murphy was very capable with a gun, Miller was a testament to that, but Bellamy was a natural with his Glock as well. But he didn't have a choice. Bellamy gently bent and placed his gun on the asphalt. He didn't kick it towards Murphy, though, but just to the right of him. 

It came down to this, Bellamy thought with despair. He would use all of the skill, natural talent, and abilities he possessed to get Clarke out of there. He would protect her with his dying breath. After everything he had gone through to try and catch Murphy, the damn man had hijacked his night with Clarke. 

"Murphy, let's talk this out. No one needs to get hurt." 

"Yeah right, Blake. You and I both know I put the noose around my own neck if I go with you. There's still a death penalty in this state." Murphy shook his gun at them again, "So no, I'm not going to give you my gun. I have my own plans. In fact, I want you to step away from the pretty blonde."

"I can't do that, Murphy. That's not an option." Clarke's hands tightened even more his back and his knuckles were white from clenching them so tightly. "We can work something out."

Murphy motioned at Bellamy to move and pulled the hammer of his gun back. "Step away, Blake, now."

"Okay, okay. I'm moving." Bellamy stepped away from Clarke, moving to the spot Murphy was pointing at, hating how pale her face was and how terrified she looked. "C'mon man, she has nothing to do with this. Let her walk away and we can talk."

"Oh no, Blake," Murphy darkly chuckled, making his way to Clarke's side. Bellamy tensed and started to step forward, desperately aching to grab Clarke's hand and tell her to run. Murphy stopped him in his tracks as he pointed the gun to Clarke's head. "Nuh uh. You stay over there. I want to see what has Detective Blake so infatuated." he circled Clarke, keeping the gun pointed at her. "She's pretty, Blake, I'll give you that. A bit sophisticated for a guy like you, I imagine. But all this blonde hair. It's like a halo, like an angel." He was behind Clarke when he thrust his hand into her hair, yanking her head back. "I bet you like grabbing it in bed, huh?"

Bellamy's jaw tightened and he took a miniscule step forward. "Please. Murphy. Don't hurt her." He swallowed, holding his hands up. "Do whatever you want to me, just let her be." 

Murphy laughed. He was still holding Clarke's head back and Bellamy could see the tears threatening to fall over her cheeks. "Please, Blake, like I would let leverage like this go." He ran the barrel of the gun down Clarke's cheek. "I just want to play." He leaned in close to Clarke's ear, whispered something into her ear that caused Clarke to cry out and reach her hand up to grip at his hand in her hair.

The cry made every muscle in Bellamy's body clench. "Murphy, enough. This ends now. Let her go." He barked, stepping forward another step. He was ten yards from the pair with the gun five yards in the opposite direction, but it was still too far. 

If there's one thing Bellamy knew not to do after a year and a half of dating Clarke Griffin, it was to underestimate her. John Murphy did not have that knowledge. Before either man could move, Clarke wrenched Murphy's hand from her hair, twisting and simultaneously ripping the gun from his hand. It was a dangerous move, and if they had had any time, he would've yelled at her for putting herself in danger like that. Clarke pointed the gun at Murphy, who was now standing there with a small smirk on his face and his hands up.

"Brave, Angel." She took a step back as he glided towards her. Bellamy scrambled for his own gun. "But I can't let you do that." He lunged at Clarke, grabbing at the gun. She dropped it with a huff of breath, stepping quickly out of Murphy's reach. Bellamy had his gun now, pointing it at Murphy.

The next moments happened slowly. Bellamy was only feet from Clarke, but Murphy was pointing his gun at her, muttering under his breath about how "she should not have done that". Bellamy was fast, but he was no Superman. Murphy was going to shoot Clarke, and there was nothing he could do about it. 

"Murphy!" He yelled, desperately trying to grab his attention. Murphy glanced at him out of the corner of his eye, gun still trained on Clarke.

"C'mon Blake, I'd be doing you a favor, taking this bitch off your hands." He looked back at Clarke, sneering, and Bellamy used the moment to move towards his fiancé. "The appeal is gone now."

"Good." Bellamy grunted, just before he fully moved in front of Clarke. At the sudden movement, Murphy pulled the trigger twice, but not before Bellamy pointed his own gun and fired.

He jumped before the shots were fired and they both went down in a tumble of limbs. His ears were still ringing from knocking his head on the pavement and firing his own gun before he went down. As he turned his head, he saw Murphy lying on the ground completely still, but he could hardly believe what his eyes were showing him. He was distantly aware of Clarke struggling underneath him, trying to get out, but he quickly turned his body so they were face to face and he was completely covering her. Bellamy frantically ran his hands over her body, trying to feel for any injuries. In his experience, John Murphy didn't miss his shot.

"Clarke! Clarke! Are you alright?" He grabbed her face with his hands, noticing blood coating his palms and in turn, her cheeks. "That's blood. Where are you bleeding? Where are you hurt?" Bellamy was distraught with panic, trying to see where the blood was coming from.

Not her, please God, not her. I'll do anything; just don’t let her be hurt.

But Clarke was trying to say something to him, tears streaming down her face and making tracks through the blood he had put on her cheeks. "Bellamy! Bellamy! Calm down! I'm not the one hurt!" The last sentence she said didn't make any sense. The blood was on her, that indicated she was hurt. 

"Baby, there's blood all over you. We need to call an ambulance. Where is your phone?" He got up to kneel next to her, just so he could assess her injuries. It was dark out, and the only light was from a broken street lamp a bit further down the darkened street. He couldn’t see where she was bleeding. But just as he twisted to try and better see what they were working with, he felt a stabbing, searing pain in his abdomen and a crushing feeling in his chest. He grabbed his stomach with one hand and his right pectoral with the other. As he pulled his fingers away, all he could see was the deep, dark red of deoxygenated blood covering his hand. Clarke got to her own feet and grabbed his shoulders as he stared at his hand in horror. 

The pain intensified, burning through his body and he could feel the blood dripping down to the waistline of his pants. He started to pitch forward, his legs no longer holding his weight, when Clarke caught him and lowered him gently on his back.

"Bellamy! Bellamy!" She was screaming his name, but it was getting fainter as he stared at the night sky above them. He was vaguely aware of her scrambling for her phone while putting pressure on his wound in his chest and he wanted to tell her to stop crying. He hated it when she cried. Bellamy tried to lift his arm, if only to comfort her, but he found he couldn’t move either one. They were like lead, and so were his feet, he realized. The agony he had felt in his torso had dulled a bit, now just an uncomfortable twinge as he watched the love of his life scream and cry into her cell phone, blood coating her hands and her pretty blonde hair matted to the blood on her cheeks. 

Her dress was ruined, the pretty, dark purple permanently stained with his blood. There was a scrape on her cheek from him slamming her into the asphalt when they fell. Her new engagement ring was glittering brightly despite the blood now coating it, a much too insistent reminder of what had already transpired. This was supposed to be Clarke's night, Bellamy had wanted to make it all about her. That was clearly a bust now, as he lay bleeding in the middle of the street, the body of a man he hated lying only feet away.

Bellamy must have closed his eyes, because a second later, Clarke was jolting him out of whatever stupor he had been in. "Come on, baby, I need you to open your eyes. Don't close your eyes, Bellamy, please." Just to please her, he forced his eyes open, hating how distraught she looked. 

"The ambulance is on their way, baby, you just have to keep your eyes open until they get here." Clarke's left hand was on the side of his face, her thumb rubbing frantic circles on his cheekbone. Her right was still trying to stop blood flow from his chest. "Stay awake, Bellamy, or I swear I'm never going to forgive you."

He wanted to chuckle at that. She would forgive him for just about anything, she loved him. She had even agreed to marry him. The thought of marrying Clarke made him smile faintly. It took the biggest effort he had ever put forth, but somehow he brought right hand up to catch her left hand that was still on his cheek. Bellamy gently rubbed the engagement ring he had given her only 20 minutes before with a finger, looking at his fiancés face that was still the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, despite the blood and tears coating her face. Even though his head felt like a dead weight on his neck, Bellamy managed to turn his head into her left hand and he gently pressed a kiss to her palm before turning back to face her. 

"Clarke," his voice was almost less than a whisper, he wasn't even sure she could hear it. "I love you."

Apparently she could hear, because she started crying harder, pressing harder on his chest and moving her other hand to his stomach. "No, Bellamy Blake. Don't say that like you're saying goodbye. This is not the end." She bit off the last words with a fierce look on her face. Clarke pressed a desperate kiss to his lips, almost bruising in force, but he liked the pressure of her mouth on his. "This is not the end, do you hear me? You're going to stay awake, and we're going to get married and live happily ever after. We are forever." She was sobbing now, her words mostly unintelligible, "Listen to me, Bellamy, we are forever. You are mine. I am yours. We are infinite. Nothing- nothing will keep us apart. You just have to stay awake."

Bellamy tried to tell her that he wanted to stay awake, if only to make her stop crying, but he found that words would no longer leave his mouth. As he opened his mouth, he could taste a coppery mouthful of blood coating his mouth and he desperately wanted to spit it out. He only ever wanted the taste of Clarke on his tongue, especially if these were their last moments. 

Bellamy Blake knew he was dying. He knew it like he knew he loved Clarke Griffin. He knew it like he knew the sun would rise in the morning. He didn't want to die. He wanted his happily ever after with Clarke, with their not- so- white picket fence and big house. He wanted to see her in a white dress in a church, or outside, or wherever the hell she wanted to get married. He wanted to see her grow round with his children, and have those blond- haired, brown- eyed little boys and girls running around the yard with Octavia's little ones. He wanted to see what else she could draw of him and he wanted to see her open her new art gallery. 

As the edges of his vision turned black, he also knew that he wouldn't get to see those moments. He would never again feel the press of Clarke's lips on his, or her soft skin under his hands as they made love in their bed. He would never again hear her laugh, or have his world light up just by her smile. They were forever. But he was not. 

Bellamy's eyes drifted shut. He wished his last moments were with her smiling at him, but he understood why she was sad. He was hazily sentient of her pleading with him to open his eyes, but it was like someone had glued them shut. He just couldn't. He was getting so tired, and even though he wanted nothing more than to take Clarke into his arms, he couldn't. 

He was done.


	12. Chapter 12

She couldn't breathe. It reminded her of the asthma attacks she had as a kid, but back then she had her dad rubbing circles on her back, telling her to breathe, or Wells holding out the inhaler for her to take.

This time she was alone.

Bellamy was on the ground in front of her, eyes closed and so, so very pale, his chest rising and falling infinitesimally. Clarke couldn't bear to look at the body lying only feet away. The man had caused so much pain, so much death, and it looked like he was going to have more red on his ledger.

She heard sirens faintly in the distance, but looking at Bellamy's face, she wasn't sure they were going to get to him on time. Clarke put both hands on his wounds, pressing down hard. Despite the blood coating her hands, the engagement ring glittered, reflecting the dull light of the streetlamps. It was mocking her. Finally, happiness had found her after everything she had been through, and in a split second, it was taken away. Her fiancé, best friend, lover, and soul mate was dying. And she couldn't do anything to stop it.

_Slow down the bleeding, Clarke, slow it down and the paramedics will help._

Minutes passed. All Clarke could hear was the choking, sobbing sound that was her breathing, her pulse rushing in her ears. She could feel Bellamy's blood seeping around her fingers onto the cold asphalt, no matter how hard she pressed on his chest. She saw the red and blue lights reflecting off the blood on her arms, the lights playing with the contours of Bellamy's expressionless face.

She was vaguely aware of the cops exclaiming over the body of John Murphy while the paramedics knelt down to deal with the fallen officer. One of them, a young guy who didn't look any older than Clarke, tried to pry her hands off Bellamy, trying to see the wound.

"No, no, no, no, no, no. I can't let go." Clarke knew she was almost unintelligible, but she couldn't speak clearly, "You can't make me let go."

"Ma'am," the young man said carefully, his gloved hands covering hers on Bellamy's abdomen and chest, "you don't have to let go, but I need to see what we're working with. I'll put pressure on the wound right after you move your hands." She didn't want to. They couldn't make her. "Let me do my job."

Clarke knew it was irrational. They were trying to help him. They would take good care of him, try their best to take care of him, but something had snapped inside her chest. She could see the paramedic talking to her, she could see his lips moving as he tried to talk her down, but she couldn't hear what he was saying over the blood rushing in her ears. She looked back to Bellamy's face. He was so still; he could've been sleeping. But the flecks of blood on his cheeks and forehead, covering up his freckles, were a stark reminder that her fiancé was dying.

"Clarke. Clarke." She felt hands on her shoulders, before the reached around to grasp her cheeks. Her head was moved without her permission until she was facing someone she recognized. Captain Kane. This was good. She knew Kane. She knew he loved Bellamy too. But he was trying to talk to her. "Clarke. Let the man do his job. He'll do everything he can. But we have to get Bellamy to the hospital. They can do more for him there."

She nodded mutely, but she still couldn't take her hands from his body. "I can't." She heard herself whisper.

"Can't what, Clarke?" Kane's voice was gentle, an abrupt difference of the stern man she remembered from the times she had seen him before.

"I can't let him go." Her voice wasn't loud, but she knew Kane heard her when he closed his eyes briefly. His hands moved to her wrists and he forcibly removed her from Bellamy's body. The paramedic was ready for the switch, quickly covering Bellamy's wounds and rapidly talking with his partner as the driver pulled the ambulance as close as possible to the prone bodies.

Kane grabbed Clarke's cheeks again gently, forcing her to look him in the eye. "You won't have to let him go, Clarke." He was worried, though. She could tell from the tenseness around his mouth and the way his forehead was pulled into a frown. "We're going to get him to the hospital. Come on." he motioned her to the ambulance and she realized with a start that the paramedics had loaded Bellamy in and were closing the doors.

"Wait," Kane called to them, stopping them before they drove away. "Take her with you. She's his girlfriend."

She wanted to correct him. _I'm his fiancé, he just asked me to marry him_. But before she could say anything, he was passing her off to the paramedics, who grasped her forearm gently, helping her into the ambulance. They sat her down on the bench next to the stretcher.

Bellamy had an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth, the elastic band making marks in his cheeks. Ignoring the protest of the paramedic sitting next to her, Clarke shifted so she was by Bellamy's head. The blood was drying on her hands, not leaving any streaks of red when she ran her hand over his forehead. Clarke leaned down, close to his ear, shifting her small fingers into his thick hair.

"Just hold on." She whispered in his ear, closing her eyes against the brightness of the interior of the ambulance and the intense stare of the paramedic. Her throat was tight, it was hard to speak. "I won't let you go, Bellamy. I will never let you go. Remember, we are infinite. This is not how it ends."

His body tensed for a moment, startling Clarke and the paramedic, who was now fitting the IV into Bellamy's arm. Then he went limp.

"He's not breathing." She screeched. "He's not breathing."

The paramedic roughly pushed her out of the way, and she fell against the side of the ambulance, hitting a cupboard full of medical supplies.

Clarke watched as the paramedic swore softly and muttered, "Going to have to intubate." She could hardly look as the man shoved a thick, clear tube down Bellamy's throat.

It seemed like the ride to the hospital took forever, watching the paramedic steadily keep count. He was helping Bellamy breathe. He was keeping oxygen in her fiancé's lungs. She was in a haze; holding Bellamy's hand tightly in hers and watching the steady rise and fall of his chest. She jerked forward as the ambulance screeched to a stop and the doors opened, revealing the ER nurses and doctors waiting for them.

"What do we have?" She recognized the voice as they took Bellamy out first, but she couldn't place it.

"Bellamy Blake. Male, multiple gunshot wounds to the abdomen and chest. Stopped breathing on the way here. No exit hole that we could see." The other paramedic was helping her out of the ambulance, keeping hold of her arm as they trailed the doctors with the gurney. "Jaha, he's a cop. Make sure you take care of him."

It was Thelonius. That was the voice she recognized. But he hadn't seen her yet.

"We'll do our best." Thelonius said softly, and Clarke was struck with a vision of what Wells would have looked like if he were still alive. This was Thelonius' element, helping people, just like it had been his son's. "You said Bellamy Blake?"

He wasn't facing her, but heard him swear softly when the paramedic confirmed Bellamy's identity.

"Someone page Dr. Griffin. This is her daughter's boyfriend." They turned down the hallway to where Clarke knew the operating rooms lay. Then he turned. Clarke knew the moment he saw her, his dark features widened in surprise. "Clarke? Are you hurt?"

Clarke knew how she must look. Still in her heels with her hands, dress, every part of her coated in Bellamy's blood. She could feel her nicely curled hair now stuck to her cheeks with sweat, blood and tears. She was about to answer when the paramedic holding her arm brought her forward, closer to Thelonius.

"She's not hurt, from what we can tell, just in shock. She was trying to stop the bleeding when we got there." He looked at her with respect in his eyes. "She's probably the only reason he's still alive."

They had reached the operating room. Thelonius let the gurney go inside without him, stopping Clarke with his hand and effectively shooing away the paramedics. "Clarke, you know you can't go in there. Now tell me, are you hurt?"

Clarke kept her eyes trained on the door that Bellamy had just gone through. "I'm not hurt. It's all his blood." She finally looked at Thelonius. "It's all his blood. Save him. You have to-"

"Thelonius." Her mother's sharp voice rang out down the hallway, and both Clarke and Thelonius turned to face her as she briskly walked towards them, only slowing down with surprise when she saw Clarke. "Clarke? Oh my god. Are you- are you hurt? There's so much blood."

She didn't even protest when Abby put her hands to Clarke's cheeks. Clarke covered them with her own.

"I'm not hurt, mom. It's not my blood. Bellamy was shot. Murphy shot him." She was babbling and distantly aware of Thelonius excusing himself to go through the doors that Bellamy had moments before.

"He was shot twice, mom. Twice. He was coughing blood. He stopped breathing in the ambulance. I tried to stop the bleeding. I tried so hard." Clarke was sobbing. Without a word, Abby pulled Clarke's head to her shoulder, embracing her daughter for the first time in five years. Clarke didn't fight it, just grasped her mother's shoulders, desperately seeking something to stay grounded.

"Honey, we need to get you cleaned-"

"You have to save him."

"What?" Abby sounded puzzled.

"You have to save him, mom. You're the best surgeon in the hospital. If anyone can save him, it's you." Clarke broke away from Abby's embrace and placed her hands on her mom's shoulders. "He cannot die. He can't. You have to save him. You have to do everything you can to save him." She punctuated each sentence with a little shake.

"Clarke, I'm not going to leave you like this."

"Don't worry about me. Worry about him. Save him, mom." Clarke put every bit of feeling she could into the words, as if that would convince her mother that she should leave her, "I love him, mom. I love him more than anything. Please, save him."

Abby regarded her for a long moment, taking in her daughter's extremely disheveled appearance, from her blood stained pumps, to her blood stained forehead. Without looking away from Clarke, Abby barked at two nurses down the hall.

"You. Come here." As they scurried towards them, Abby nodded at Clarke. "I'll do my best. I promise." To the nurses, she said, "Get my daughter to a shower and some scrubs to wear. Cancel my surgeries for tonight."

The two nurses unsurely took Clarke's arms, trying to lead her away. "Save him, mom. Please. I can't live without him."

Abby nodded, every bit the formidable Chief of Surgery Clarke remembered from high school, before going through the doors Thelonius had just entered.

Feeling empty and drained, Clarke let the two nurses lead her upstairs, to an empty room with a bathroom. They gently told her they would be right outside, waiting with scrubs for her when she was ready. They gave her a towel, shampoo, conditioner and body wash they had gotten from somewhere and left the bathroom. Clarke peeled the ruined dress off her body, gingerly stepping out of the heels. Her new bra and underwear joined the pile of ruined clothes that she planned to burn when she had a minute. Her jewelry stayed on.

Clarke numbly turned the shower on, wincing when the cold water hit her skin. As the water turned warmer, she watched the blood start to soften off her body, running in tiny rivulets down her skin, painting the tile red. She couldn't feel her hands. As the blood stained the floor red more and more, Clarke felt he throat tighten, but her eyes remained dry. She felt like she simply didn't have any tears left. She ran her numb fingers through her hair as she applied shampoo and then conditioner, trying to stop the shaking that had started in her legs and trying desperately not to panic.

The feeling of not being able to breathe returned, and she bent over to place her hands on her knees as she gasped for air. Eventually the shaking in her knees became too much, and she sat on the ground. The water rushed around her, rinsing the conditioner out of her hair and Clarke brought her arms around her knees. She rested her forehead on her arms, trying to count her breaths.

She got to 215 before she felt ready to stand up again. She turned off the water and wrapped herself in the towel. The blood was gone, down the drain, but she still felt it coating her hands.

The nurses gave her a clean set of scrubs and led her back downstairs to the waiting room, telling her to get them if she needed anything. Clarke just grimly nodded, before turning her attention to the doors leading to the operating rooms. There were people all around her, roaming around and talking, but nothing penetrated the haze until she heard a familiar voice crying out her name.

"Clarke!" Octavia came running through the emergency room doors, Lincoln on her heels. Clarke stood up as Octavia barreled into her, crushing her in a tight hug before pushing her at arms length to look at her. "What happened? Captain Kane called. He just said Bell was shot? But said he didn't have any updates."

In as little words as possible, Clarke explained to Octavia what had happened, ending with convincing her mother to operate on Bellamy. When she was done, Octavia pulled her into another hug, tears spilling over her cheeks.

"I'm glad you're okay." She pulled away, allowing Lincoln to grab Clarke in a quick hug before leading them to the chairs Clarke had just been sitting in. "Have you had any updates?" Octavia asked, linking her fingers tightly with Lincoln's.

Clarke shook her head no, grasping her own fingers together, watching the way the light played off her engagement ring. "It could be a while though." When she didn't hear a reply, Clarke looked at her friend.

Octavia was looking at the ring on Clarke's hand. She smiled softly. "He finally did it." Her eyes met Clarke's. "It's beautiful." When Clarke just nodded, Octavia looked at the doors to the operating rooms before looking at Clarke again. "What do we do now?"

Clarke sighed, a heavy sigh filled with pain and sadness, "Now we wait."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't hate me! The next chapter is almost done, so it should be up soon. Thank you for all those comments for the previous chapter! I laughed so hard at some of the reactions, it made my day! I love responses like that, so you can comment or let me know at raybansandremingtons.tumblr.com (it's not 100 centric fyi, but I'm always down to chat)!  
> Also, I apologize for any inconsistencies with medical/hospital knowledge- the extent of my experience is binge- watching Grey's Anatomy and other med-based drama shows. 
> 
> Anyway, hope you enjoyed the chapter! Have a good day everyone:)


	13. Chapter 13

He couldn't breathe.  
   
"His right lung collapsed again. Get him back down to the OR" The voices were too loud. They made fireworks light up behind his eyes.  
   
"Mom. What's happening?" That voice. He had the best dreams about that voice. Who was it?  
   
"You need to leave. We're taking him back into surgery."  
   
The one with the pretty voice was talking again, but there was a fuzziness in his brain so he couldn't understand her words. She sounded upset. He wanted to grasp her hand and tell her it was going to be all right, but he couldn't. Why couldn't he open his eyes? Why couldn't he talk?  
   
More importantly, why couldn't he breathe?  
   
Darkness pulled him under again.  
   
\--  
   
The next time he heard voices he could breathe again. His eyes were still shut and his mouth felt like sandpaper, but at least it didn't feel like he had a knife digging into his lungs anymore. His awareness wasn't what it should have been, he knew that. But the feeling of weightlessness was quickly gaining ground. The only thing keeping him anchored was the pain in his chest and abdomen, but even then, they were a distant strain.  
   
He became aware of female voices somewhere on his left, talking quietly.  
   
"When is he going to wake up, mom?" The same melodious voice from before pierced his brain. He wanted to see the owner of that voice. "It's been three days. He's supposed to wake up."  
   
"He was severely injured, honey, you have to give him time." Who was severely injured? Him? That would explain the throbbing in his chest and the pain in his stomach. Why couldn't he remember what happened? He wanted to open his mouth and ask the women these questions, but he couldn't seem to find the muscles to do that.  
   
"I don’t know what I'm going to do if he doesn't make it." The first woman said, "I don't know how I'm going to live without him."  
   
"Honey," the second woman had a deeper voice, like smooth honey, "if he doesn't make it, you will do what you always do. You will survive. You will miss him. You will grieve him. But you will survive. Think of everything you have to live for."  
   
There was silence for a long moment. "Is that what you did?" The other woman quietly responded. "When Dad died, is that how you made it through it? By thinking of what you had left?"  
   
"Honey, when your father died, I thought my world was ending." Quietness spread through the room and he was distantly aware of a beeping sound behind his head. "Did you ever know why I chose not to resuscitate him?"  
   
The pretty voiced woman didn't respond, but she must have shaken her head or something to acknowledge the question.  
   
"After I got off the phone with you, when you were on your way, your dad kept coding. His heart was failing from the trauma and there was nothing we could do about it, the damage was too extensive." The woman was quiet, but he could hear the tears in her voice. "It was the hardest decision I've ever made. But Jake- he was in so much pain. We would bring him back, and his heart would just fail again. In between one of the failures, only minutes before you ran in the hospital, your father grabbed my hand." The woman was actively crying now, he could barely hear the words, "He whispered to me. The last words I ever heard my husband say to me were 'May we meet again'. And I knew. I knew he was ready to go, that he wanted to go. He was suffering. I couldn't bear to see him in so much pain. So I held his hand as the life left his eyes." He could hear the woman sniffling, he felt sorry for her. Such pain was undeserved.  
   
"Why- why did you never tell me that?" The first woman had an equally teary voice, like she was just seconds away from sobbing. "Why did you let me hate you all these years?"  
   
"Oh honey, I didn't want you to be mad at your father for not staying."  
   
"Mom, " Her voice sounded muffled, like she had her hands over her mouth, or her face tucked into someone's neck, "you should've told me the truth. I- this- we wouldn't have been like this for so long."  
   
Sounds of muffled crying filled the room in the absence of words for long minutes. He found he was glad that these two women were talking, but he couldn’t figure out why. He was getting tired again, it didn't help that his eyes were already closed.  
   
Before he could drift off into unconsciousness again, he felt cool fingers on his forehead. They were soft but strong as they swiped the hair off his forehead. "Mom, I love him. He's the one for me. If what you felt for Dad was half of what I feel for him, you would know how impossible it is for me to live without him."  
   
Were they talking about him? He wanted to scream that he was right there, that he wouldn't leave her, even if he didn't know who she was. But his mouth wouldn't move. There was nothing he could do to make the words come out. The fingers ghosted down his cheek to trace his mouth. He wanted to kiss the thumb that was mapping his lower lip. He couldn't explain the urge; he just knew that it was something he was aching to do.  
   
"Honey, you're stronger than you think. I know you love him. But you will not die without him."  
   
"I know," she whispered quietly, bringing her fingers to cup his cheek. He wanted to turn his head into her caress. "I know that. I know I'm strong enough to live without him. I just don't think I want to." She rubbed her fingers along her brow ridge, smoothing away some of the throbbing that had started to build behind his eyes. He wanted to tell her that under no circumstances was she allowed to die. Ever. The thought of it brought pain to his chest that had nothing to do with the stinging that was already there.  
   
The gentle swipe of the soft fingers over his temple was soothing him, lulling him into unconsciousness again. He gave up trying to speak, letting the warmth from her fingertips instill a sense of tranquility in him that he ached for. She gave him the peace he craved, humming softly at him as he drifted off again.  
   
\--  
   
It was a similar process of waking up, but this time, he only heard the soft whispering of the woman with the magical voice. Her mouth was close to his ear, her body a warm weight on his left side. He could feel her hair tickling his neck and her hand resting on his chest, just to the left of where the biting pain was. That hand was rubbing soft, soothing circles on his chest and the other was gripping his left hand that was pinned beneath the both of them.  
   
"You can't leave me." She whispered in his ear, her warm breath washing over him like a balm. "I know it's hard, baby, I know you're tired. But you have to fight to come back to me. Fight hard. I don’t ever want to let you go." There were tears in her voice. "I refuse to let you go. I need to see your eyes open again, baby. I need it. Without you, I'm all alone. Don’t leave me alone. I thought you loved me, baby. Why are you trying to leave me?" He wanted to yell that he was right there, not leaving her for anything. "Don't let that kiss be our last. Please, just wake up."  
   
Once again, his mouth wasn't moving and it was frustrating him to the point of crying. This beautiful- voiced woman was saying things that he didn't understand. He didn't want to leave her, he really didn't. He just couldn't figure out how to tell her that.  
   
"Remember when we first met, baby?" She was whispering again, but he could feel drops of water falling onto his neck as she burrowed her nose into the space under his ear. Not water, he realized as he felt her shake, they were her tears. "I remember seeing you and thinking 'hot damn, I want to draw those freckles'. Remember how shy I was at first, until I finally got the courage to buy you that coffee? You didn't come back to the Lodge for like eight days. I remember being so mad." She chuckled wetly, "Then one day you come back in and bought me a coffee in return. I could barely speak. And then that awful first date." He felt her shaking against him, with tears or laughter, he wasn't sure. "I was sure you were never going to want to see me again. I was a train wreck." She brought the hand on his chest up to cup his cheek. "But you did. And it brought us here. You lying here, shot, and me still a train wreck."  
   
He had been shot? That would definitely explain the pain he was feeling.  
   
Her voice was quieter, like she was mumbling to herself, but she was so close to his ear that he could hear every word. "I don’t know if I can make it without you, baby. I don’t think I can. We're supposed to get married. We're supposed to have our happily ever after. I don’t even care that you want so many kids. I'll give them all to you, as many as you want, if you just come back to me. I'll have little girls so you can threaten any boy that ever comes near them and I'll have little boys so you can be the dad you never had to them. Picture it, baby," she put her hand back on his chest, continuing to rub those little circles that were so soothing. "Little boys with your eyes and freckles, they'll be blonde and they'll be so strong and brave, just like their daddy, so they can protect their little sisters. And little girls with your hair and my nose but one will have blue eyes and one will have brown. They'll be just as strong as their brothers, and feisty like your sister."  
   
The funny thing was, he could picture them, even though he still couldn't picture her or himself in his mind. He knew somehow that the little girls she was talking about would have cute little upturned noses and dark, thick, curly hair, one with deep brown eyes and one with light blue eyes like the sky during the summer. He could see the little boys with dark eyes and freckles covering their entire faces, and he somehow knew that their hair would be just as blonde and curly as their mother's. It frustrated him, that he couldn't picture her. She had the voice of an angel and he thought that if he could just open his eyes a tiny bit, maybe she wouldn't be so sad anymore.  
   
"So you have to come back to me, baby." She continued. "The world is a darker place without you in it. You need to come back to me so we can have our happy ever after. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please." The last words turned into unintelligible whispers as she nuzzled closer into his neck. She lightly hummed a relatively familiar song, although he was unsurprised that he didn't know what it was. Her humming faded as the blackness reclaimed him, until all he was aware of was the familiar, warm weight of her and the feeling of her breathing at his side.  
   
He distantly knew, somewhere in the back of his mind as unconsciousness started to take him again, that this feeling of comfort something he wanted to experience everyday, with her at his side.  
   
\--  
   
Floating would be an odd thing to be feeling, but that’s what he was doing, floating in blackness. He was weightless, gravity didn’t exist, and it was beautiful. He barely existed; he was nothing, not even an idea. But the little piece of thought was floating somewhere in him. A pressure was pulsing on whatever he was.

Then it became more than a pressure. It was an uncomfortable compression, forcing him to respond to gravity. He wasn’t floating anymore, just being. His body came into awareness, he realized his arms and legs and body were a part of him. A force of burden was placed in his mind and he struggled to figure out what it was. Then the black became lighter, and he was trying to respond to the brightness but couldn’t figure out how.

Bellamy Blake.

That was him.

He was in the hospital. He recognized the smells and sounds from outside his room door.

Full consciousness found Bellamy with a warm weight in his left hand. The warmth grounded him, keeping him awake. He vaguely remembered opening his eyes once before to Octavia holding the same hand, whispering, "thank God, you're awake" and Miller sitting next to his bedside, not unlike the way Bellamy had stayed with him when he'd been shot. When he'd groaned from the brightness of the room and the throbbing in his stomach and chest, Octavia had put her little hands to his forehead, smoothing away his hair. He fell asleep again with O's fingers lightly rubbing at his temples.  
   
Octavia. Miller. No Clarke.  
   
Clarke.  
   
She hadn't been there.  
   
Sudden panic made him force his eyes open. The brightness of the fluorescent lights made him cringe and he immediately wanted to close his eyes. But he needed to find Clarke. Make sure she was okay, that she wasn't hurt.  
   
Bellamy started to sit up, but the warm pressure on his hand made him look down. He sighed. He could finally breathe again.  
   
Clarke.  
   
All he saw was her blond mass of hair, facing away from him and leaning over his hand with her head resting against his left thigh. Now that he had his bearings he realized she was holding his hand with her left, he could feel her engagement ring against his fingers. Her right hand was reached up farther, resting in the crook of his same arm. Clarke's breath was ghosting over his fingers and all he wanted to do was bundle her up in his arms and never let her go.  
   
Bellamy was still staring at her when she shifted slightly, bringing her head to lightly kiss his fingers. She rested her forehead on the back of his hand for a long moment before finally turning to face him, with her head still lying on the bed. She looked at him a long moment before letting out a great sigh and sat up, staring at him.  
   
Clarke looked like hell. Her hair was limp around her face, her eyes were darkened with exhaustion and the bags underneath them were the color of the dress she'd been wearing the last time he'd seen her. Bellamy let her study him, just as he was memorizing her features.  
   
"Hi." His voice came out a croak.  
   
"Shhh. Don't talk. Let me get you some water." She let go of his hand to reach to his bedside and he immediately wanted to take her hand again, desperate to feel the warmth in them again. When she brought the straw to his mouth, he watched her as he drank the cool water. She was pale too, like she hadn't been outside in days. That wasn't right. Clarke was like the sun to him, she should never be as dimmed down as she was right then.  
   
When Bellamy was done with the water, she placed the glass on his bedside table and reached for his hand again. The second her skin touched his he felt centered. Grounded, like she was keeping him from floating away.  
   
"What- what happened?" His voice was croaky from disuse.  
   
"Murphy. He shot you twice, in the abdomen and stomach." Her hand was gripping his so tightly it almost hurt, but looking at the desperation in her eyes, he didn't say a word. Maybe he was grounding her just as much as she was him. "You fired your gun before you went down. I called the ambulance. They brought you to the hospital, my mom operated on you. Your lung collapsed from the chest wound, You- you-" His Clarke choked back a sob as she looked at their joined hands. He hated that she was so upset.  
   
"Clarke? What is it?" He tried to ask gently, but his voice was so hoarse it came out scratchy.  
   
She took a deep breath before looking back at him. "You died, Bellamy. Your heart stopped three times. Twice in the operating room, once in here." Her eyes were full of tears, ready to drip over her lids if she dared blink. "You died. You died. My mom almost stopped trying after the third time, you had been gone so long. She said your brain had gone without oxygen for so long that she wasn't sure you would ever wake up, much less recover."  
   
Oh, Jesus. He had done exactly what the other men in her life had always done. He had left. Not on purpose, but it was still there. He had almost left her alone, just like her dad, just like Wells.  
   
"Oh, Clarke. Come here." He opened his arms, an invitation for her to crawl in them. Bellamy's face twisted into a frown when a little furrow appeared between her eyebrows and she shook her head. "Blondie, c'mon. I haven't been able to hold you in too long, don’t make me wait longer." He tugged a bit on her hand, "Please, Clarke."  
   
She finally relented, slipping into his arms as easily as ever. There was a slight twinge to his stomach when the bed jostled, but he chose not to mention it. If Clarke thought she was hurting him, she would jump out of bed like she was on fire. Bellamy hated the thin hospital sheet that was between him when she finally snuggled into him, but moving it would be too much of a pain in the ass.  
   
Bellamy felt whole again, with Clarke's little fingers lightly resting on his chest and her left leg hitched a little around his. She had her entire body pressed against his side, like she didn't want an inch of space between them. Her head was leaning on his left shoulder and he could feel her fingers tracing shapes into his pectoral. Bellamy relished the feeling of his Clarke in his arms again, and the couple stayed silent for a long while.  
   
Bellamy was nodding off, distantly aware of her hand traveling up and down his body, as if to reassure herself that he was still there, when he felt her head shift up to look at him. He cracked one eye open and stared down at her. Clarke's mouth was pressed in thin line, her eyebrows were furrowed again and her eyes were distressed. She brought her left hand up to his face and traced his brow ridge, down his nose, brushed across his cheekbones before finally reaching down to touch his lips. She stayed silent, just looking at his mouth and he had the distinct impression she was avoiding his eyes.  
   
"Clarke." He murmured, bringing his right arm up to hold her fingers against his face. He felt the slight biting sting of the wound in his chest, but he ignored it. He knew Clarke. He knew she was running things over and over in her mind, looking for anything she did wrong and he needed to put a stop to it before she drove herself crazy.  
   
Before he could say a word Clarke brought herself up to press her lips against his. It was a soft kiss, one born of fragility and adoration. It was everything he ever wanted. Moving his hand to cup her face, he traced his tongue along her upper lip and swallowed the light gasp she exhaled as she moved herself up and over his body so she was straddling him. Clarke placed both of her hands on either side of his head, keeping all her weight off him, but making sure to keep a firm hold on his mouth. Bellamy traced his hands lightly up and down her sides before bringing them back to cup her face. Her tongue dueled with his before she nipped and licked her way down his jaw to the side of his neck. He groaned lightly as she sucked that soft space behind his ear softly before continuing her journey down his neck. Clarke was on her way back up, nibbling on his jawbone when he lost his patience and forced her lips to come down on his again. He loved the taste of her, a mix of mint and rain and home.  
   
But there was a mix of something else in their kiss, he realized. Salty. She was crying, tears silently streaming down her face as she kissed him thoroughly.  
   
"Clarke." Bellamy mumbled against her lips before moving to kiss the tears off her cheeks. "Clarke, look at me." He kept a hold of her face and looked up at her. "Clarke. I'm alive. You're alive. We're both fine."  
   
"No!" She surprised him as she (carefully) extracted herself off his body. "No, we are not fine." She said between clenched teeth. "We are not fine. You died. You fucking died, Bellamy Blake. You almost left me." Clarke started pacing back and forth in front of his bed. "What if you had never woken up? Huh? What would I have done?"  
   
"Clarke-"  
   
"No. You don’t have an answer because you don't know. Bellamy," Clarke put her hands to his cheeks, "I am so angry with you. So angry I could scream." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "I can't lose you, Bellamy. You can't leave me."  
   
Bellamy covered her hands on his cheeks, "Clarke, I won't leave you. I won't, I promise."  
   
She wrenched away from him to continue pacing. "You can't promise me that. Yeah, Murphy is dead. But what about the next criminal that takes a shot at you? What then? God forbid they don't miss their mark and actually kill you. How am I supposed to survive someone else I love dying? I can't- I can't live like this." She clutched at her hair, looking at him with wild eyes.  
   
"What would you have me do then, Clarke? You want me to quit my job?" He was getting angry. Why couldn't she see that he would always do anything in his power to stay with her?  
   
"No- I- Ugh. No Bellamy, I don’t want you to quit your job. Your job is a part of you. I just- I just can't-"  
   
"What can't you do? Because you say you don't want to live like this but tell me not to quit? That doesn't leave very many options for you there, Blondie." He desperately wished he could get out of bed, just so he could calm her down, but he highly suspected that he would crumple to the floor if he tried. Bellamy knew his voice was getting gruffer and lower the more angry he got, but he couldn't help it. She was just so frustrating sometimes. "You don't want to be with me? Is that it? Is it getting too hard for you?"  
   
"Bellamy!" She cried, "How could you say that? How dare you say that?" Clarke strode over to the bed and grabbed his face between her hands. "I love you, Bellamy. I love you so much it hurts. I can't not be with you, it's not a possibility for me." Despite her loud and angry words, Clarke's fingers were gentle and soothing on his cheeks. "You were asleep for nine days, Bellamy. Nine. For nine days I've been living at this godforsaken hospital, the very last place on this planet that I ever wanted to spend time, all without knowing if you would ever wake up. Nine days of not knowing if you would ever come back to me. It-it," She kissed him lightly on the lips, tears mingling in between their mouths. "It broke me."  
   
"Oh, Clarke." He brought his left hand to cover hers on his cheek, "You're the farthest thing from broken. You're the strongest person I've ever met." She shook her head in denial, "No, you are. You're so strong. And I'm sorry you had to go through this." He turned his face to kiss her palm. "I'm sorry I didn't wake up sooner. And for the record," He smiled softly, "I love you so much it hurts, too."  
   
Clarke's lips lifted a bit in return, "I'll go get the nurse and call Octavia. She'll be glad to know you're awake." She kissed him lightly on the lips and gave his hand a squeeze before moving to the door leading to the hallway.  
   
"Bellamy," She reached the doorway and turned halfway to face him, "I'm excited to spend the rest of my life with you." Clarke looked down with a sheepish grin, "I just wanted to tell you that, since our night was cut short when you asked me."  
   
His smile grew, stretching across his whole face. "I'm excited too, Blondie."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is! After that horrifyingly emotionally draining episode last night, I needed some happiness and even though this isn't super fluffy, at least it's not as depressing as last night. Not super pleased with the end of this chapter, though, so I may go back and edit it a bit if I get more inspiration. I actually had about 3 different outcomes, all super angsty and sad, but I couldn't bring myself to end like that, it made me too upset. So here it is!
> 
> Let me know what you guys think:)


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OKAY OKAY OKAY. I am SO INCREDIBLY SORRY for the delay. When I got home for winter break, I completely lost all my motivation and had the worst case of writers block ever. Like I couldn't even re-read what I had already written because it just made me cringe. So I didn't write anything but a few sentences until I got back to school then BAM, here came all the inspiration. Apparently, my home town is a inspiration sucker. Go figure. 
> 
> That being said, here is the second to last chapter. It's late where I am, and I have hot yoga at 6 am tomorrow morning that I know I'm just going to die at because I will be so tired, but once I finally got writing, I couldn't stop. This chapter is almost disgustingly fluffy. (I ABSOLUTELY LOVE FLUFFY). It's also pretty long, which hopefully makes up for the god-awful delay. 
> 
> Anyway. I'm finally decently happy with where this ended up (I rewrote it like 3 times because it just wasn't right and hometown=no inspiration). So enjoy:)

She was glad it was a clear day. The sun was shining, and the clichéd birds were singing. For a Saturday, the cemetery was pretty empty, save for Octavia's car waiting for Clarke in the parking lot of the groundskeeper’s cottage. 

Clarke had never been more grateful for Octavia. His little sister had been a godsend over the past eight months, helping Clarke while he had been recovering, and especially after his relapse. He had called her strong once, that day in the hospital when he opened his eyes, two weeks before his lung collapsed again and the bullet wound in his abdomen became infected, but after the complications, Clarke wasn't sure she was really that strong. 

Luckily for her, the Blake's were a hardy bunch. They didn't give up easily, and Clarke was sure that it was sheer stubbornness that kept Bellamy alive. 

The Blake's were also impatient as hell. 

They say a test of finding the one you're going to marry is to see how he treats his mother, waiter, or doctor. Clarke was now under the impression that there should also be a saying about the man you're going to marry reacts and heals after getting shot in the chest and stomach. Needless to say, the Blake- Griffin household had seen some tense moments in the eight months of the detective's recovery. Bellamy's rehabilitation to get back into working shape had definitely been an uphill struggle, one Clarke was extremely happy she didn't have to endure alone. With the help of everyone that loved them, Octavia and Lincoln, Ashley and Miller, even Abby, Clarke and Bellamy had made it through the last eight months of healing and planning mostly unscathed.

(Unscathed being a relative term. Bellamy had two rather large scars on his abdomen and chest that Clarke hated to look at, but she always made a point of pressing her lips firmly to them at some point as they made love, reminding herself that he was alive, real, there, in her arms.)

But today, of all days, the younger Blake was sitting patiently in her car as Clarke made her way to two separate graves. 

"Hey, Wells." She said quietly as she crouched and placed a large white calla lily next to the headstone. "I'm sorry I haven't visited in a while. Things have been… hectic around here lately." Clarke smiled softly as she gazed at the black marble stone. She still loved the inscription. 'In peace may you leave this shore. In love may you find the next. Safe passage on your travels. Wells Jaha. Beloved son and friend.' His mothers' stone had a very similar etching, as was Jaha family tradition. 

"Today's a pretty big day, you know?" She let out a sigh. "Who ever thought it would come? I didn't. If you had told me two years ago that this is where I'd be today, I would've laughed my ass off at you." Clarke chuckled lightly before her eyes welled up with tears. "I wish you were here, Wells. Not a day goes by that I don't miss you. I miss you all the time, but it doesn’t- it doesn't hurt like it used to. I guess that's what happens when your heart heals, right? Bellamy always says he wished he had been able to meet you, to thank you for taking care of me after my dad died. He says he's glad I had someone, even if it wasn't him. I think you'd like him, Wells." She thought of her fiancé, the intense, loving, stubborn man he was. "I wish I could have all my boys with me today. That's the only thing that would make it better than it's going to be." She glanced at her bare left hand. It felt so much lighter without the engagement ring on her finger. The watch on her left wrist glared at her, letting her know that she was already five minutes behind schedule. "I gotta' go now though, Wells. I promise I won't wait so long before visiting next time." Clarke kissed her fingertips and placed them gently on the top of the headstone. "Love you, Wells."

Clarke's next stop was always bittersweet. Jake Griffin's headstone was black marble, like Wells', with the inscription 'May we meet again. Jake Griffin. Devoted husband, father, and friend'. Of course, now Clarke knew what 'may we meet again' meant, thanks to her mothers' enlightening conversation at Bellamy's bedside. 

"Hi Daddy." When she visited Wells, Clarke was able to hold herself together usually, but without fail, every time she visited Jake Griffin's grave, she broke down. This occurrence wasn't going to be any different. "So… so today's the big day. Mom wanted to come with me, to visit, but I told her this was something I had to do on my own." Clarke placed the second calla lily in front of the headstone. "Getting to know Mom again was, well, it was weird. I'm not the same person I was when I left Arken. She was expecting the same daughter she used to have. But Rhode Island changed me, Bellamy changed me, everything that happened changed me. But we're trying to make it work. She's trying to be patient, and I try not to bite her head off at the littlest things. She, she um- she wanted to walk me down the aisle." Clarke sniffled. "She was upset when I said no. But I decided that if you couldn't walk me, I would walk myself. I know you and Wells are going to be there with me anyway. I just wish- I wish you could meet the man I'm going to spend the rest of my life with, Daddy. I chose well, I think." Clarke looked to the parking lot where Octavia was waiting. "I chose well for all my new family members. They've- they've helped me heal. Nobody could ever replace you or Wells in my heart, of course. But they've made the space a little smaller. 

"The gallery is almost ready for opening. I haven't decided on a name, but I got in contact with a bunch of my professors at RISD and told them about the grand opening. At least five of them are coming for it." She laughed through her runny nose, "Hopefully it won't be a total bust. Bellamy finally got cleared for active duty again. He's been going stir crazy in the house. He actually passed the physical a couple months ago, but his PD- ordained psych evaluation didn't go so well." Clarke sighed. "He has really bad nightmares sometimes, worse than before he got shot. They diagnosed it as PTSD, but even I could have told him that. There's nothing I can do for him on those nights," She shook her head. "He'll wake up in a cold sweat, panting like he just ran a marathon and he'll say his scars hurt. Or sometimes he'll tell me that Murphy actually got me and watching me die on the asphalt was the nightmare part of it. It scares me, how terrified he gets. All I can do is hold him through it. Make sure he knows I'm there. 

"I miss you, Daddy." Clarke wiped away the tears that had spilled over, "I wish you were here today. But I have to go now; it's time to get ready. Octavia is going to have a heart attack if we're late." Just like she had done with Wells, Clarke kissed the tips of her fingers and placed them on Jake's name. "I love you, Daddy."

Octavia just smiled as Clarke slid in the passenger's seat of Lincoln's Mustang, knowing the blonde didn't need her to say anything. Octavia and Clarke had become closer than ever in the last eight months, bonding over their worry, frustration and love over the elder Blake sibling. Today, since Clarke wasn't allowed to see Bellamy, O had driven Clarke to the cemetery, a task usual deigned to her brother. 

They drove in silence until Octavia grew tired of the silence and turned the stereo on. Both girls burst into laughter as Mamma Mia blasted through the speakers, singing along until the song ended and the theatrical version of Hakuna Matata started playing. 

"Why on Earth does he have this?" Clarke managed to get out through her giggles.

"When I was a student teacher, one of my students made me this CD," Octavia explained, "We had spent an entire class talking about musicals and art. The kid brought me this and a bouquet of daffodils on my last day."

"Why does he have it in the Mustang then?"

"We were still dating at that point, and he picked me up from the school that day. I wanted to listen so we put it in." She shrugged, "I guess he never took it out."

Clarke laughed harder. "Bellamy and I kept imagining Lincoln totally rocking out in this badass Mustang, singing Mamma Mia and Defying Gravity."

"Yeah, I've definitely heard him humming Lion King songs when he gets home before, so I think that's very possible." Both women laughed until tears ran down their face. "God, I love that man. He's the best."

"Both our guys are pretty awesome," Clarke said. "We're very lucky."

Octavia smiled softly. "Definitely very lucky."

-

They had decided to write their own vows. Clarke had brought it up, casually mentioning that her father had written his vows in the Griffin wedding. At first, she didn't think Bellamy would go for it. Aurora Blake was a notorious traditionalist, and although she liked Clarke, it was clear she was used to being one of his two favorite women, not one of the three. Clarke was originally hesitant about mentioning the vows, but after finding a video of her parents' wedding while sifting through old boxes at her mom's house, she knew it was what she wanted.

When she mentioned it to Bellamy, he had looked at her blankly for a moment, before his lips pulled into a wide grin and kissing her forehead. "Of course, Blondie, it's your day. We can do whatever you want."

She had kissed him fully on the mouth, loving the taste of coffee and mint and Bellamy. "It's our day."

-

Clarke sighed as they reached the venue. It was always a tricky gamble, holding such a big event outside. But this particular Saturday, on the 23rd of May, it was perfect. The sun was shining, with hardly a cloud in the sky. Arken was green, winter long over, and Clarke was definitely glad about that. The long months of Bellamy being bedridden weren't quite a distant memory, since sometimes she woke up in a cold sweat, images of him lying in a pool of his own blood swirling around in her head. But somehow, with the weather getting warmer and Bellamy finally being cleared to get back to work, Clarke was able to shake off those nightmares.

The venue had been Bellamy's idea. Clarke had thought he'd go for the church, with its great big stained glass windows and beautiful pipe organ on the upper deck. So she was surprised when he had directed her to drive minutes out of Arken to a small mountain resort. It was rustic; not usually Clarke's style, but the actual building wasn't what Bellamy had in mind. After following a little dirt path over a small hill for a couple hundred yards, the trail opened up into a giant meadow, filled with long grass, purple, blue and pink wildflowers. It was the size of maybe four football stadiums, lined by great expanses of forest. There was a small creek that ran right through the entire meadow with small wooden bridges going across it. 

The minute Bellamy had shown Clarke the meadow; she knew this was exactly where they were going to be married. It was beautiful, wild and free, something both Clarke and Bellamy needed to experience after their long painful months. 

Octavia pulled into the parking lot, parking right next Bellamy's old car. He had been at the venue all day, setting up and making sure everything was to Clarke's exact liking. The white calla lilies she had placed at Jake and Wells' graves were in her bouquet, but each table had centerpieces filled with white calla and Asiatic lilies and light blue orchids that went with Clarke's color scheme. 

(Although Bellamy had pretty much let her take the reins on a lot of the decision making for the entire ordeal, he had put his foot down for the colors. Octavia had suggested pink, Ashley liked orange, but Bellamy swore he would wear a bag over his head if his fiancée made him wear pink. 

In a burst of frustration, Clarke had asked him, "Well, what the hell do you suggest then, Blake? You can't just veto a decision and not give a solution."

He had shrugged slightly, "I was thinking a light blue with the gray. It would match your eyes."

Her irritation had deflated quite a bit.)

Clarke missed Bellamy. She hated to be one of those women who depended completely on a man and couldn't function without seeing him. And as per tradition, she hadn't slept at home the night before. She had stayed at her mom's house for the first time in almost seven years. Her old bedroom, which was now the guest room, was lonely without Bellamy. The bed was too cold and the body pillow she tried to use as a substitute to cuddle up to just didn't cut it. Clarke hadn't gone a day without seeing Bellamy in almost eight months, and now she hadn't seen or spoken to him in almost 24 hours. It was driving her crazy not to hear his voice and see his freckled face. 

She peered around the grounds, searching for a glimpse of his broad shoulders and narrow waist. 

"Nuh uh almost- sister-in-law. I know what you're doing." Octavia grabbed her arm and hurried her towards the bridal party's dressing rooms. "You know the rules. It's bad luck to see each other before the wedding. Besides," She said, turning down a maze of hallways, "He's probably outside setting up with Lincoln. The dress and everyone is here, so we have to start your makeup." Clarke was jolted to a halt as Octavia screeched. "Lincoln! Cover his eyes!" 

Clarke got a small glimpse of Lincoln scrambling Bellamy into a chokehold and covering his entire face with his large palm before Octavia's small hand covered her eyes. "Well- no- Lincoln, you don’t have to choke him out."

"Hey, Blondie." She could hear the smile in Bellamy's voice, muffled slightly by Lincoln's hand. 

"Hi there, detective." It was like a coiled spring had released inside her chest at the sound of his voice. She didn't realize she had been wound so tightly. "I missed you last night."

"I know, it's not the same without you there." 

"Okay, okay. That's enough of the vomit- worthy cute-fest." Octavia interrupted. "Big brother, you know the rules. Lincoln, get him out of here." Her future sister dragged her by the arm past the men.

Clarke felt a warm hand catch her by the elbow, stopping Octavia, who still had her hand over Clarke's eyes. Bellamy pulled her close and somehow found and kissed her cheek lightly. Clarke could feel Lincoln's hand covering his face on her temple. 

"I'll see you later, Blondie." Bellamy whispered huskily in her ear. He let go of her arm, lightly trailing his fingers down to her fingers.

"Come on, Clarke." Octavia tugged her as she yelled back at her brother and husband. "Make sure he's not late, Snookums."

When Octavia finally took her hand from Clarke's eyes a couple yards down the hall, Clarke gazed at her. "Snookums? Really?"

Octavia laughed. "He hates it. Completely despises it. But he knew better than to bring Bellamy in here. I texted him when we got here, so serves him right."

Clarke just shook her head at the mischievous woman in front of her with a grin. She was so excited to marry into the Blake family.

\--

The traditional bridal march was something that Aurora Blake had not been inclined to budge on. Clarke's future mother-in-law had stretched her traditionalist views for the wedding, but at this she stood firm. Clarke didn’t mind overly much, she would do what she could to make Aurora happy, especially something as simple as a song. But in typical, Abby- Griffin- fashion, Clarke's mother had gone completely over the top with the group to play the march. Or rather the entire ensemble Abby had chosen. They played beautifully; the violins and the cellos matched the flutes and clarinets exquisitely, the piano's almost haunting melody playing softly in the background. Clarke knew the extreme excessiveness was Abby's way of showing Clarke she cared. 

To be perfectly honest, at this point, Clarke didn't particularly need all the fanfare and extravagance.

She just needed Bellamy. 

But their relatives and friends seemed to have a need for the excessive ceremony and the flowers, the ensemble, the gigantic dress and all the fluff that usually comes with a big wedding.

They had waited for eight months. Clarke was tired of waiting. 

\--

"Okay, Clarke. Are you ready?" Octavia's voice floated from the main room. The dressing rooms were beautiful, if not a little rustic, filled with dark browns, greens and blues. There was a main dressing area, where Octavia and Clarke had their hair and makeup done, with an adjoining bathroom/dressing room area, where Clarke was standing in front of a three- way mirror, looking at the finished product.

She didn't hear Octavia open the door, but she definitely heard the quick intake of air when Octavia saw her in the mirror. 

"Oh my God, Clarke. You look beautiful." 

Clarke just smiled at her in the reflection. It was true. She was beautiful. She felt like a princess.

It wasn't strapless; she was too busty for that. But the straps were a sheer lace pattern, lightly going over her shoulders into a v- neck that went deep enough that her cleavage was visible, but not too low that Aurora would have a heart attack at the slore her son was marrying. The dress fell from her bust in an empire waist, a silk shift underneath the lace covering. It wasn't poofy in a Cinderella- esque fashion, but there was a definite flare from her hips to the floor. The lace train of the dress was only a couple extra feet long, but it dragged enough on the floor to give the illusion of a princess dress. 

Clarke hadn't cut her hair except to have it trimmed since before Bellamy's incident, so it now cascaded in curls down her back. The loose ringlets were pulled to the side, pinned in place by a pearl- beaded clip Aurora had presented to her almost- daughter- in- law before she had left to take her seat outside. Loose, blonde tendrils framed Clarke's face, highlighting her round cheekbones and laugh lines. 

Clarke looked to Octavia, giggling slightly at the moisture welled up in the corner of her eyes. "None of that. I'll ruin my makeup if you make me start crying."

"I know, I know." Octavia swiped lightly at the tears, trying her hardest not to smudge her eyeliner. "You just look so beautiful. And I'm so happy for you. And Bellamy. It's just getting to me."

Choking back the tears that wanted to escape her own eyes, Clarke leaned forward to hug Octavia to her chest. "Thank you. For everything." 

Octavia leaned back, smiling widely at Clarke before handing her the bouquet of calla lilies and blue orchids. "Are you ready?"

Clarke nodded, smiling slightly and trying to embrace the butterflies that felt like a storm in her stomach. "I'm ready."

Octavia helped gather her train to head outside. The walk to where the ceremony was taking place was only about five minutes away, but it seemed like a mile to Clarke. It wasn't that she was nervous. This was Bellamy, for God's sake. She had been waiting for this moment for a long time and she was so ready to be part of the Blake family. But the tornado that now occupied her stomach was pressing in on her sternum, making it hard for her to breathe and walk at the same time. 

"Clarke?" Octavia steadied Clarke as she stumbled right before they rounded the corner to the ceremony. "Hey, hey, what's wrong?"

"Nothing, nothing." The blonde shook her head, as if to shake some courage into her bones. "Just- just nerves."

"Pft. What on earth could you be nervous about? You guys already had your 'in sickness and in health' moment. It's all cake from here." Octavia teased gently.

Clarke smiled. "I know. It's just… so huge, I guess."

"I know, hon, I know. But really, you are the last person I would ever worry about marrying my brother. He looks at you like you hung the moon and the stars. He is so in love with you, it makes me want to vomit, and I have my soul mate already." Octavia grabbed Clarke's face between both of her hands, being mindful of the bride's makeup, but gripping it firmly enough to get her attention. "I know it won’t mean much, because you'll still be nervous. But you have nothing to worry about. You and Bellamy are meant to be together."

Clarke covered Octavia's hands with her own and smiled. "Thanks, Tavia. Really."

Octavia grinned and kissed Clarke lightly on the cheek. "Welcome. Now let's do this thing. I'll go signal the music." 

As she flounced off to start the band, Clarke took a deep breath. I can do this. I love Bellamy. He loves me. This is what I want, more than anything in the entire world. 

"Okay, Clarke. Time to go." 

Clarke distantly heard the sound of violins starting the march, the cellos bursting with their haunting melody a beat after. The smell of wildflowers and nature assaulted her senses as Clarke rounded the corner to the aisle. White chairs were lined in rows, with small white flower petals covering the meadow ground. Octavia was in front of her, walking slowly to where her brother and husband were standing. 

Clarke knew everyone in the crowd. There was her mother and Thelonius, standing side by side with tears welling up in both their eyes'. Aurora was next to them, hands clasped firmly against her chest with a big smile that Clarke saw everyday on Bellamy's face. She saw Harper, professors and friends from RISD, the mayor and city council her father had been a part of. But everyone else faded when her eyes finally reached Bellamy. 

Like the groomsmen, Bellamy was wearing a light grey suit with a matching grey vest, white shirt and light blue tie that matched the flowers in Clarke’s bouquet and her eyes. There was a single white calla lily on his suit jacket. His hair hadn’t been combed back, but it had been cut a little shorter in the past couple days so his curls didn’t quite completely cover his ears, just lightly falling on his forehead. 

He was standing in front of the pastor, hands clasped in front of him and legs spread apart in his classic detective/cop pose. The arch behind him was wrapped in vines and lilies.

When Clarke finally brought her eyes to Bellamy’s she caught her breath. His hand was covering his mouth and even from where she was standing at the back of the aisle, she could see tears about to spill over his lids. As he took his hands from his face, he bent over at the waist, like he was out of air, just to look back up at her with a smile so bright she swore it lit up the entire meadow. The music and everyone faded even more distantly as she finally reached Bellamy and the pastor. 

He was rubbing at his face, trying to get rid of the tears that had fallen over, but couldn’t seem to keep the smile off his face. Clarke reached up to gently wipe at a lone teardrop on his cheek. Bellamy trapped her hand on his face with his own, turning into her palm and pressing a small kiss to it.

“Clarke. You… You look absolutely stunning.” His eyes filled up with tears again. “I have never seen anything as beautiful as you are right now.”

She smiled, almost shyly, as she wiped away the new moisture on his face. “Thank you.” 

When the pastor cleared his throat, the couple was brought back to the present moment, but he was grinning gently at them. 

“Let’s proceed.” He began to talk about marriage and the struggles and contentment it brings to people. It wasn’t that Clarke didn’t care about what he was saying, because she did. Both she and Bellamy had gone over what the pastor would say, and she loved every piece of it. 

But Bellamy was right there. Looking absolutely delectable in his suit with his freckles prominently standing out against the winter- paleness of his skin, he made it hard for her to focus. All she could think about was tearing the jacket off and ripping the tie off with her teeth and messing up his artfully gelled hair. She loved that he looked so handsome, and that he was staring right back into her eyes like she was the only thing he could see. But the more he looked at her with eyes that said he couldn’t wait to shred her dress from her body, the more impatient and less focused she got. 

Then Bellamy started grinning. Smiling with an eyebrow raised, he looked pointedly at her until Clarke realized the pastor had said something to her.

“Hmm?” She managed to murmur, cheeks lighting up brightly with a blush.

“Your vows, Ms. Griffin. You said you had your own?” The pastor was looking at her like he knew what she was thinking and Clarke’s blush grew even hotter.

“Right, yeah, of course.” She reached down into the side of her bodice where she had placed the handwritten vows. Clarke unraveled the paper and cleared her throat. She had spent weeks writing the vows, making sure they were just right. But as she looked at the paper in the growing silence, she realized she didn’t need them. Yes, she had mostly memorized them anyway, because that’s just who she was, but anything she needed to say to Bellamy, she didn’t have to read off some piece of paper. Clarke folded the paper and placed it at the small side table next to the pastor. 

Bellamy watched her with questions in his eyes and raised eyebrows, but she just smiled at him lightly and grabbed his fingers with hers.

“The first time I saw you almost three years ago, I thought my heart was going to jump right out of my chest. Our eyes met and it was so immediate and so powerful- far deeper and inexplicably beyond anything I could have imagined. It wasn’t something I could every replicate or force. It was just us. I knew I had to know you. It wasn’t just a want; it was a need to learn your name and your personality, gestures, mannerisms. It was a need to be able to draw you whenever I wanted and watch you live your life.” 

Clarke smiled as she heard Octavia sniffle behind her. “I’ve always had goals and aspirations for my life, but when I met you, I learned what it was to dream. To dream of the things I deserve, and I only want them with you. Bellamy, you know me better than anyone else in the world and you still manage to love me without reserve. You are my best friend and my soul mate. You are my mentor, confidant, hero and my greatest challenge. But most importantly you are the love of my life and you make me happier than I could have every imagined.” She paused to swipe at the tears running down her cheeks and smile gently at the ones falling down Bellamy’s. 

“When you proposed, you said you were fatally in love with me, that we were infinite. I didn’t think I would ever have to know what that means. But then you got hurt, and my heart was ripped out of my chest. For days I didn’t know if you would wake up or if I would have to live the rest of my life without you by my side. The day you woke up is now in my top five favorite days of my life. So far today is number one. Octavia said something earlier,” Clarke looked back to her maid- of- honor, who was silently crying behind her, “She said that we’ve already been through the sickness and health part of our relationship, that everything else would be easy. I believe her. Nothing could be as difficult as those days by your bedside, waiting for your eyes to open. With that being said, I vow this to you. I vow to love you tirelessly through perfect and not- so perfect times. I promise to support you in your endeavors and promise not to get too upset when you don’t come home at a decent hour. I promise to only ever sketch you in an appealing light, and to conveniently forget some of your wrinkles and laugh lines you might develop over the next few years.” Clarke grinned at the laugh that emitted from the audience and at Bellamy’s fake affronted look. “I promise to make you laugh whenever possible and to cuddle at any convenient time. You have helped me triumph over challenges and hurdles and I promise to do the same for you. I pledge to always laugh with you, only sometimes at you, and to never go to bed angry. You fill all the empty spaces in my heart and I am forever grateful for having met you that day at the Lodge three years ago.” Clarke took a deep breath, “I promise to always love you. As sure as the sun will rise and set I will always love you. You are the kindest, most sincere person I know. After what we’ve been through, I will never take your love for granted. Bellamy, you are my heart. My soul mate. My infinity. Everything I have and everything that I am is yours.”

Clarke finally finished with a sigh, tears streaming down her face. But she could feel her smile take over her mouth as Bellamy wiped at the tears on her cheeks. His gaze was so soft but so palpable, she could feel it like a physical caress as he looked lovingly at her. 

The pastor cleared his throat, his own eyes watery at the end of Clarke’s vows. “That was beautiful Ms. Griffin.” He gestured to Bellamy. “If you’d like to begin, Mr. Blake.”

Bellamy didn’t take out a paper of vows like Clarke had; he just grabbed her hands and began. 

“When I was hurt, I had a dream. We were in the hospital, lying on the bed and you were tucked into my side. For some reason, I couldn’t open my eyes but I knew it was you with me. Once I got out of the hospital, I kept having this recurring dream, until I realized it wasn’t a dream, but an actual memory of my time at the hospital.” Clarke’s eyes went wide as she realized the exact moment he was talking about. “You told me I couldn’t leave you, like I would ever given the choice. You told me to fight to come back to you, that you didn’t want to let me go. You said you wanted our happily ever after. You told me you could picture our future children and you wanted to grow old with me.” Bellamy’s fingers tightened around hers.

“Blondie, I heard you. I fought with everything in me to come back to the woman with the voice of an angel because I couldn’t bear to hear her sorrow anymore. You anchored me, forcing me to come back to where I belong, which is anywhere by your side. I told you when I asked you to marry me, that sometimes when I think of you, I only see you. That’s still the most truthful thing I’ve ever said. You light up my world like nothing else ever could. I knew the moment I met you that we were destined to be together. I knew we were endgame. With you, I’m whole, full, and alive. You are my breath and every heartbeat I have belongs to you. You are lodged so far in my heart, there’s no hope to get you out. Clarke, you are my inspiration. I see how hard you work, how much passion you put into your art, and it encourages me everyday. You are my soul’s fire and the magic in my days. We’ve been through things most couples haven’t, so along with everything else, I vow to always appreciate who you are and what you’ve done for me.”

Like he had done for her, Clarke gently rubbed at the tears running down his face as he continued. “I see these vows not as promises but as privileges. I get to live with you, laugh and cry with you; care for you and share everything with you. Nothing could ever make me happier. You are my everything. You are my light, and you’ve shown me more love than I’ve ever known before. I promise to you perfect love and perfect trust, because one lifetime with you will never be enough for me. I promise to be your greatest fan and your toughest adversary. I vow to be the best parts of me that fit perfectly with the best parts of you. I pledge to lend you strength for all your dreams. I promise to help shoulder our challenges, because there is nothing we can’t face if we stand together. You are my chosen life anchor and looking at you today just cements what I’ve known since the moment I met you. You are mine. I am yours. I vow to love you with all that I am until the day I die. We will have our happily ever after and grow old and gray together, watching our children grow and love. I vow to give you this because nothing will every make me happier than making you happy. I love you more than anything in this world.” 

Clarke’s lips were stretched in a tumultuous smile, trying not to tremble from the tears running down her face. She knew there wasn’t a dry eye in the audience, how could there have been? It wasn’t like she had been to a lot of weddings, but she had never heard any vows as heart wrenchingly beautiful as the ones Bellamy had just spouted to her.

The pastor wiped at his eyes surreptitiously, before clearing his throat once again. “Well, there’s nothing I could say to top that. Do you have the rings?”

Bellamy didn’t take his eyes from Clarke’s, just reached behind him to hold out a hand to Lincoln, as his brother- in- law held out the small blue box that held both their wedding bands. 

Clarke watched in and almost surreal amazement as Bellamy extracted the rings from the box and held his out to her. The pastor was saying something, but she couldn’t hear his voice as Bellamy slid the engagement ring and new wedding band on her third finger. The engagement band was the same, with the blue and white diamond polished and glinting back at her. The new ring was thin white gold, with little matching diamonds lining the entire band. They had chosen it together, not wanting to overpower the beauty of her engagement ring.

When the pastor indicated it was time to put Bellamy’s much more understated ring on his finger, she slid it gently onto his left hand. It was a dark matte platinum, masculine, and slid on his finger effortlessly. As Clarke looked at their entwined hands, her little, pale fingers next to his strong, dark ones, she couldn’t help but feel a wave of relief wash over her. He was hers. Finally and forever. Only death could part them now, and they had beaten it once already. Clarke looked up to meet his eyes. They were smiling back at her, and she could see the joy radiating from them like a physical light. 

Clarke was still gazing into his eyes when he grabbed her by the cheeks and pulled her into a kiss. He swept her into a dip, both arms folding securely around her waist as she clung to his strong shoulders and met his lips fiercely. She was distantly aware of the audience cheering and whooping as Bellamy continuing plundering her mouth with his own. 

It wasn’t until Lincoln covertly cleared his throat and nudged Bellamy on the shoulder that her husband finally swept her back and released everything but her left hand. He kissed the back of her hand gently before raising both their arms up to hold their clenched fingers in the air.

“I’m proud to introduce the new Mr. and Mrs. Blake.” The pastor was saying, trying to be heard over the sounds of clapping and whistling coming from their friends and family. 

Bellamy tugged Clarke along back down the aisle, smiling at some and shaking hands with others as they started walking back to the main building. Octavia and Lincoln followed behind them, and Clarke could hear Octavia still sniffling and saying, “that was just the cutest thing ever” to her husband. 

After they led the congregation to the area the reception was being held, Clarke tried to disappear into main bathroom, mostly to relieve herself but also to catch her breath. Everyone was so nice and wanted to congratulate her, but she needed a moment alone. What she really needed, she mused slyly, was a moment alone with her husband, but Miller had pulled him away the second they reached the bar to deal with an issue over the alcohol. He had apologized profusely to the bride, promising to return the groom as soon as possible, but she still hadn’t seen Bellamy in ten minutes. 

When she rounded the corner to head outside, a firm grip grabbed her by the bicep and pulled her back into the bathroom. Clarke immediately relaxed as she inhaled a deep breath of mint and Bellamy. 

“Sorry that took so long.” He murmured into her neck as he slid his arms around her waist, hands splaying against the small of her back. She wrapped her arms around his neck and burrowed her nose into his shoulder. 

“’S alright. You’re just not allowed to leave me for the rest of the night now.” 

“Deal, Blondie.” Bellamy lifted his head and framed her face with his hands. “You really do look beautiful, Clarke.”

Clarke grinned at the feel of cold metal from his left hand. “Thanks.”

“No, like I couldn’t take my eyes off you the entire time.” He smirked. “I barely heard anything of what the pastor said.”

Clarke giggled and turned her face into his palm on her cheek. “I didn’t hear a thing. I didn’t even hear him say ‘you may now kiss the bride.’”

Bellamy chuckled and leaned in to peck her on the nose. “That’s why you were so surprised that you didn’t even react at first when I kissed you?”

“Yep. I was too busy looking at how attractive you are in that suit.” She batted her eyes demurely and attempted the patented Blake smirk.

Bellamy’s eyes were hooded and he took a step closer, crowding her into the corner of the bathroom, trapping her into place with his arms. “I’d be happy to give you another demonstration, if you’d like.”

Clarke’s breaths were coming in short little gasps as he palmed her waist and pulled her flush against him. “I would definitely like that. On one condition.” She held a hand to his shoulder, making his downward descent to glue his mouth to hers pause.

“What’s that?” His voice was barely more than growl.

“We’re going to be the Griffin- Blake’s. Not just Blake’s.” 

Bellamy stilled as he considered her words. His eyes narrowed at her. “We can go with Blake- Griffin. I can deal with that.” 

“We’re going to negotiate that.” Clarke mused, giggling as he growled at her and ducked his head to meet her mouth.

“Later, Blondie.” Bellamy said between kisses.

“Later.” She promised.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The place and the dress are actually real things. I went to a wedding two summers ago and it was literally the most perfect thing ever. I don't think my description gave either the meadow or dress justice, but I tried. Hopefully I didn't make either of them too ooc. I was just trying to grasp what they would act like after an experience like the one I wrote them in.
> 
> I tend to be a big fan of happy endings. So the next chapter is going to be like the closing ceremonies, tying up any loose ends that were written in and giving just a bit of foresight into the lives of the Griffin- Blakes. But all this fluff makes me happy, so I'm happy to write it. 
> 
> Comments and feedback give me life, so don't hesitate to say something or get at me on tumblr:)
> 
> PS If anyone wants to see anything specific domesticated Bellarke stuff, like certain things you want to see in their married future, let me know and I'll be happy to write it in. I'm trying to hit all the points possible that I can think of in their lives since it's the ending.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the epilogue! 
> 
> Super sorry for taking so long. I can't believe I'm done!

Bellamy would remember the wedding going off without a hitch. After he pulled Clarke into the bathroom to have his way with her, they both made it through the reception without anymore inappropriate shenanigans. By then end of the night, however, he was ready to kill Mrs. Griffin from her keeping Clarke from coming home. 

("Let's just clean up for 15 more minutes." She kept telling Clarke, persuading her daughter to not leave until she had helped clean the entire venue. 

Bellamy just about strangled the woman.)

But he mostly forgot about that once they got back home. In typical wedding night tradition, Bellamy managed to lift Clarke and her giant princess dress and carry her over the threshold of their home. There was a slight hiccup when he tripped over the suitcases lying next to the door. Yes, they were packed and ready to go for the honeymoon, but someone (it might have been him, admittedly) forgot to move the suitcases to the car they were going to take to the airport the next morning.

Clarke was intoxicated enough at that point from all the toasts and drinks and dancing and fun that she only laughed about falling flat on her ass as they both spilled to the floor. It was Bellamy who made sure to check the back of her head that had hit the floor wasn't nursing a bump. (She wasn't.)

The actual wedding night went as expected. When they finally made it back to the bedroom, Bellamy basically tore her dress off with his teeth, mumbling incoherencies all the ways he loved her. The honeymoon to Mexico was just days of eating, drinking, sun bathing, and making love to the beautiful woman that was his wife. At the end of their trip, Bellamy took Clarke into his arms and just knew that this life was the only life he could ever want.

Married life suited Bellamy. Granted, it wasn't quite different from the life they were leading before, since they had already lived together and paid the bills together and went grocery shopping together. But this felt different. He loved walking with Clarke in the store, sometimes glimpsing the shine of her wedding ring as it reflected off the lights. He tried not to be too caveman, but there was something sweet when other men looked at his wife and their faces fell when they saw her ring or their intertwined hands.

Their answering machine now has Clarke's voice ringing out "Hi, you've reached the Griffin- Blake's. Sorry we're not here right now. Leave a message at the beep!"

(Yes, they changed their names to Griffin- Blake's. Bellamy had been adamant about putting his name first, but Clarke had asked him to do it her way after a particularly strong orgasm during the honeymoon and he had been willing to give her whatever the hell she wanted.)

They didn't go to the Lodge as much as they used to. Clarke spent a lot more time at the studio now and Bellamy was on the fast track to becoming captain when Kane retired. Life gets busy, and neither of them had time to barely kiss each other good morning before rushing out the door. 

Until the babies came.

Three years passed before Clarke started puking in the mornings. At first, as is the cliché norm, she thought it was a stomach bug. Bellamy was usually gone early in the mornings for that week that she started regurgitating anything she had eaten, but he still knew something was off. 

It was a morning late in July when Octavia made her way over to the Griffin- Blake household, container of chicken noodle soup and her firstborn child, Analeigha, in tow. One look at her sister- in- law had Octavia cackling and leaving the house with the promise to be back in a few minutes. Octavia shoved the grocery store pregnancy test under Clarke's face as she hunched over the toilet, laughing even harder at Clarke's bewildered expression.

As both women waited for the results to show, Clarke watched Ana rolling on her stomach on the floor of her bedroom. 

"She's so… tiny. Like she's going to break in half." She faced Octavia worriedly, "I'm not ready for something so breakable. I-I have too much paint on my hands all the time and I drop things. I'm not ready!"

"Clarke, you're ready." Octavia wasn't as soothing as she wished she could have been between smiles. "No one is ever ready for a kid. You have seven months to get there. Besides," She picked Ana up and shoved her in Clarke's arms. "They're a lot sturdier than they look. And Bellamy is great with babies, you don't have to worry about a thing."

Clarke knew logically that a baby was the next step for them. After all, she had promised Bellamy four of them. But with the moment so close, her stomach upset, and her boobs hurting more than they did during PMS, she couldn't help but feel overwhelmed.

Of course, she didn't have a choice but to be ready. Six months later, the Griffin- Blake's and company welcomed Elisa Grace and Xavier Wells into the world.

("I told you before, Clarke." Bellamy whispered in her ear as they watched both of their perfect children sleep after they brought them home from the hospital. "I don't do things halfway."

He avoided her swat towards his head with a grin, dancing out of the way before moving back to his wife and settling his arms around her. 

"Next time," She warned, only a slight smile on her face, "I'll let you push two giant headed things out of you and see how you like not going 'halfway'.")

Fraternal twins, it wasn't clear whom they resembled more. With curly brown hair and bright blue eyes, freckles and little dimples in their chins, heart shaped faces and stubborn jaws; the twins were their parents' little replicas. 

The twins weren't the most perfect babies. Elisa ended up having colic, keeping the entire household up at all hours of the night. Xavier was nothing if not empathetic to his sisters' discomfort, so it usually ended up that once Bellamy finally got Elisa to bed, Xavier would start whining. Clarke and Bellamy took turns getting up with the babies. Or tried to, at least. With twins, sometimes one parent wasn't enough. The two rocking chairs in the corners of the room got a lot of use in that first year.

When Elisa and Xavier were three years old, Abigail Griffin was wed to Thelonius Jaha. Her grandchildren were the flower girl and ring bearer, and her daughter was her maid of honor. Clarke was never really able to get over the inherent oddness that accompanied the knowledge that her mother was no longer a Griffin. But the wedding was quaint and beautiful, and Abby Griffin became Abby Jaha. 

With two kids, an amazing wife, wonderful family and friends, and a great job, Bellamy was happy. He got to come home every night to screams of "Daddy!" and two little barrels of joy crashing into his knees. He got to give his wife a kiss goodnight and good morning every day, just as he reminded himself just how incredibly lucky he was. 

Clarke still hogged the bed, and stole the blankets in the middle of the night. Sometimes she would leave the cap of the toothpaste unscrewed, and the counters in the bathroom were just high enough that curious little Elisa could reach and play with the 'paint' that was her parents' minty- fresh Crest. But his happiness and joy in everything he found in his life was overpowering to anything negative.

He still got nightmares every once in a while, and after the twins were born, they were just two more faces to add to the long list he had dreamed of in a morgue. But Clarke was always there to soothe him, whispering soft words to him as he laid his head on her chest and she ran her fingers through his hair. 

Once the twins hit three and a half, and Clarke finally got over her mommy fears to let Octavia watch them for more than a couple hours, Bellamy took Clarke on a trip to Rhode Island. It wasn't quite a romantic getaway in anyone else's terms, but Clarke's eyes sparkled and she gushed on and on about her old life there as she took him to every spot she could manage from her past. He was happiest when he was making his family happy.

Almost exactly nine months later, Griffin- Blake Baby Number Three came into the world. With little tiny blond wisps of hair and big brown eyes, Noah Jackson came screaming into their lives, not unlike his older sister. He wasn't planned, but once Clarke and Bellamy counted back the exact date of his conception, they weren't all that surprised. They had definitely taken advantage of their alone time in Rhode Island.

After Noah arrived, Clarke had learned to cook more than just toast, and Bellamy finally bought a grill. Clarke finally started properly capping the toothpaste when Bellamy came bursting into the kitchen one evening, holding Noah in front of him. The little toddler, only two years old at the time, was covered in toothpaste, from his blond curls to his chubby little toes, all courtesy of his older siblings. 

(Trying not to laugh, Bellamy ordered the twins to their room with a stern look, before turning to Clarke and whispering, "Well, I think we know what Elisa's life path will be.")

Date nights became different. Clarke and Bellamy still loved and desired each other with a ferocious intensity, but life gets in the way sometimes. Instead of taking the time to get nice and dressed up, Clarke and Bellamy just started having quiet nights at home. Octavia, now with her own two munchkins, would watch her nieces and nephews while their parents bought takeout and watched a movie in the comfort of their bed, without the distraction and noise of the kids. During the summers, they would go back out to Jaha Road for date nights, spending all night looking at the stars before trudging home. 

Clarke's gallery started to become full of paintings and pieces not just of landscapes and abstractions, but also of little blond and brown haired children, with freckles and wide grins. She painted what inspired her, and nothing inspired Clarke Griffin-Blake like the miracles that were her children.

Story time was always an ordeal at the Griffin- Blake household. While Elisa and Xavier liked stories of princesses and princes and dragons and knights, little Noah was a bit mellower, enjoying Goodnight Moon and Briar Rabbit. But the house was only so big, with only its' master bedroom and second room, so the three children shared a room with a mix bunk beds and Queen Elsa blankets. Compromise was almost always necessary, but Bellamy didn't mind making up stories for his children. Usually, on such nights when the children were desperately trying to stay awake, Bellamy and Clarke would bundle the three rascals up in their own bed, and start to weave wild stories that suited all three personalities.

One such evening, when Elisa and Xavier were seven and Noah was three and a half, Bellamy was weaving tales of a beautiful blond princess and the knight that fell in love with her at first sight, despite his troublesome past. 

Elisa giggled when Bellamy finally finished, "Did they live happily ever after, Daddy?" The kids were sitting in between Clarke and Bellamy, Noah resting his head on Clarke's stomach, sleepily nodding off. Elisa was right next to Bellamy, with his arm around her and Xavier sat in the very middle. 

"Of course they did, Ellie." Bellamy grabbed his daughter under her arms and swung her up into his lap. "The princess and her knight became the best king and queen in the entire land and had three little munchkins." Elisa squealed with laughter when he blew raspberries on her little tummy.

"Just like you and Mommy?" Xavier was solemnly watching his twin and father, his blue eyes wide.

"Not just like Mommy and Daddy." Clarke cut in before Bellamy could speak.

"Excuse me, Blondie, I think this was my story." Bellamy said wryly. 

"It is your story. But the princess and her knight had four children, not three." She said it nonchalantly, but Bellamy could see the smile in her blue eyes that were so much like his children's. "I just thought you would want to get it right."

Bellamy's jaw dropped as his mind raced. She couldn't be-- there was no way. 

"Come on, kidlets, give Daddy a kiss, it's time for bed." Clarke scooted to the edge of the bed, picking a sleepy Noah up in her arms. She gave a wink to Bellamy as he sat still on the bed while each of his children gave him a hug and kiss, still in shock, she suspected. 

When all three children were tucked in, after long minutes of whining and pleading to stay up "just for ten more minutes, please Mommy" Clarke made her way back to her bedroom. Bellamy was still sitting on the bed, looking at his hands.

She gently sat on his lap, legs on either side of him. "You're going to have to speak sometime, Detective." Her hands made their way behind his neck, strong little fingers combing through his dark hair.

Without a word, Bellamy leaned forward to capture her lips with his. They were both out of breath by the time he pulled back. He leaned his forehead against her collarbone. "How did I get so lucky?"

She resumed running her fingers though his hair, lightly scratching his scalp. "I don't know, Detective. How did you get so lucky?" Her voice was teasing as she kissed his forehead. "I think I'm about five weeks. I took the test today when the kids were at school and Noah was down for a nap."

Bellamy could feel tears welling up lightly in the corners of his eyes. "Number four." He murmured, wrapping his long arms around his wife's waist. 

"I told you I'd give you at least four." She lifted his chin with two fingers, "I promised. I always keep my promises, Detective." 

He gave her a watery smile and pulled her in for another kiss.

Six months later Odessa Leigh joined the already- large brood of Griffin- Blake's. She was tiny, premature enough that she had to stay in the NICU for the first week after her birth. Bellamy got in the habit of reciting all the Greek stories that he could remember with her name while holding her through plastic holders in her incubator, just so she would know that she wasn't alone. It was the last birth Clarke would be able to give, due to unforeseen complications that landed little Odessa in the NICU in the first place, and Bellamy was forever grateful that she had given all that she could. Not coincidentally, with the birth of Odessa came the purchase of a new home. With this one, a little farther out in the country, each child had a bedroom to themselves, in addition to Clarke's home studio and Bellamy's office. 

Little Odessa was a quiet, serene baby. She didn't cry much, and wasn't fussy at all. Xavier, despite being almost nine, was the sibling she liked the most. As she grew up and her blonde ringlets got longer and her baby blue eyes turned brown, she followed her oldest brother around like a puppy, usually dragging the purple blanket Grandma Aurora knit for her. Xavier didn't mind, if anything he enjoyed the quietness of his youngest sibling. His twin and younger brother were loud, voracious for everything life had to give, but Odessa was like Xavier himself, always watching. 

As the children grew and the laugh lines deepened around Bellamy's eyes and mouth, he could say in all honesty that he adored his life. His wife was still the love of his existence, even after they sent their youngest off to college, and his children were his pride and joy. He had an amazing family. Octavia had given him two nieces and one nephew, all of whom were exact replicas of their father, and they lived only fifteen minutes away so he was able to see his baby sister all the time. Bellamy knew he was extraordinarily lucky for the life he had.

All those years ago, as he lay dying in a pool of his own blood, he hadn't thought he would make it through the night. He had reflected on everything he wouldn't be able to give Clarke and he had regretted immensely that he would leave her. But he never would have guessed that his life would end up like this. The little blonde fury had uprooted his life, all for the better, and he would be forever grateful that she had made him say hi.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my gosh this is the end. I think a part of me didn't want to end it, which is why it took so long for this chapter to be finished. ANYWAY. Thank you SO SO SO much to everyone that read, enjoyed, kudos-ed, commented and what not for this. I was never expecting the feedback I got so I'm super thankful to everyone that motivated me to finish it! 
> 
> As always, I live for feedback. (^^ clearly) And I'm on tumblr as well if anyone wants to chat about the torture that is the 100 this season. 
> 
> Love you all!!!!!


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